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JOHN K. PORTER, 

OF NEW YORK. 

In the case of CHARLES J. GUITEAU, the Assassin of President Garfield, 
Washington, January 23, 1882. 



Monday, January 23, 1882. 

The court met at ten o'clock; counsel for Government and accused being- 
present. 

Argument. 

Mr. Porter. If it please your honor, gentlemen of the jury. In the in- 
firmity of my own health, for I share your weariness, I proceed as well as 
I can to discharge the duty imposed upon me. Having been ill for over a 
week, the consequence of exposure to not only the confinement here, which 
we have shared with you. but also to labors out of court for over two 
months, I feared that I might have to abandon the attempt to address you 
at all. But the nature of the duty imposed upon me, not by my own seek- 
ing or procurement, is such that I should feel, as if I were almost an acces- 
Bory after the fact to the prisoner's crime, if I omitted to say what my 
strength will permit, to aid you in reaching a just conclusion. 

Gentlemen, I am sorry to say that thus far, unavoidably, the trial has been 
conducted and controlled to an unusual extent by the prisoner and his counsel, 
Mr. Scoville. Everybody has been arraigned, everybody denounced, every- 
body interrupted at their will. I have received notice from both of these 
two Guiteaus, that I am to be interrupted now; that I am to be permitted 
to utter nothing which each or either of those gentlemen, appearing as joint 
counsel in the case, may happen to disapprove. I believe, nevertheless, 
that what I think it necessary to say mill bt said, whatever obstacles they 
choose to interpose. It will be submitted in no rhetorical form, but with 
the earnestness and directness with which, if I were sitting by your own 
hearthstones, and reviewing the case in the spirit of perfect frankness and 
sincerity on your part and on mine, we should wish to discuss it. I deal only 
with the evidence, the facts, the issues and the law, as declared by the 



court. Of course you remember thai this defence was begun with a two- 
days' opening sj ;h, based upon an imaginary case, and which the coun- 
sel could nol have supposed to be the one which was to come before you 
for judgment. The purpose was obvious. The opening counsel knew, whal 
we did not — that he proposed to make the trial a very long one. It was 
important that you should begin the hearing, with impressions fixed bytwo 
days' iteration and re-iteration, in favor of the prisoner and against the 
Government. The trial proceeded. You heard the evidence, and much 
of il more than two months ago. You heard it, too, amid clamor, objec- 
tions, interruption, vituperation and blasphemy. It was not the most fa- 
vorable form in which to listen intelligently, or to remember perfectly, 
where you had do opportunity of making notes of the evidence, and were 
compelled to rely upon your memory, for that which i- contained in these 
volumes, embracing some 2,200 pages, closelj printed in Government type. 
and equal in ordinary print to nearly 5,000 pages. The prisoner's counsel 
knew that you could not, under such circumstances, recall each particular 
fact that impressed you at the time. Of course, too, t hey knew that at t he 
close of the trial, much would he indistinctly recalled, and that it would 
he easy to confound statements and impressions made in the opening speech, 
with the actual facts established by the proofs. 

( )n our side you have been addressed just t wo day-, bating an hour and 
a half. One half hour of that time was made up by the eloquenl opening 
speech of Mr. Corkhill. Nine days have been occupied in behalf of the 
prisoner, and Beven of those days, since Mr. Davidge closed his aide, 
eloquent and compacl argument. I must say in justice to the prisoner, 
that of the three arguments which have been made by him and his 
associate counsel, the one mosl free from objection was thai delivered 
by him. Aside from the impiousness of his allegations, habitual with him 
through the previous stages of the trial, it was free, at least, from the 
singular misstatement- and perversions of testimony, abounding in the ar- 
guments of his two associates. 

I wish to recall your attention to this case as il is, upon the evidence; 
and inasmuch a- 1 am publicly warned that I will not be permitted to speak 
what the prisoner or his counsel disapprove, I shall be under the necessity 
of referring you, in greater detail than usual, to the actual and control- 
ling evidence in the cause. As to anything beyond that, gentlemen of the 
jury, you ]n-t<\ expect nothing from me, and certainly the assassin and his 
defenders need fear nothing from me. My relations to the case are simply 
those imposed by plain and manifest duty, under the lull conviction, from 
the proof, continued by the declarations and oath of the party acccused, 
thai the interests of public justice demand, thai the crafty and deliberate 
murderer of President Garfield shall nol be discharged from the dock, un- 
til he is convicted and under sentence of death; thai he should then pass 
to the sterner shackles <>f the murderer's cell, there to invoke the mercy of 



that God wiio sometimes, as we believe, pardons guilt, but not the guilt 
which spares no human being. The prisoner did not spare President Gar- 
field, though he acknowledged that the victim was a good man, whom he 
was merely transferring by murder to paradise. He did not spare the wife, 
who by simply leaning upon the President's arm, saved his life on the 18th 
of June, and who, as he swears, if she had leaned upon his arm on the 2d 
of July would have saved him then. He did not spare the mother whom 
the son so honored, that yielding to the deep feeling of filial love and grat- 
itude, on his inauguration day, the first act after he kissed the Bible in 
taking his constitutional oath, was to press his lips to those of that aged 
lady, in the presence of the assembled multitude. The assassin spared 
no one then. He spares no one now. A murderer at heart then, he is a 
murderer at heart now, and he has established by his oath as a witness, his 
own frozen, merciless, and unrelenting malice, restrained by nothing but 
his crouching and abject cowardice. 

Gentlemen, you have witnessed the bearing of this man on the trial. The 
ordinary presumption of innocence is repelled by his own oath, impudently 
avowing his guilt, and imputing the blame to the Almighty. Let me ask 
you, whether, if he were now unshackled, and fully assured of the efficacy 
of the mock defense of insanity as his shield and protection — with that 
bulldog pistol in his grasp — he would not have put a summary end to 
this trial when, the other day, his honor, in his own personal views of 
propriety and duty, prohibited him from making a last speech — when 
the judge, who had been the object of his fulsome and offensive praise, 
became at once the mark of his fiendlike hate — and when the assassin, dis- 
regarding for the moment, in the violence of his temper, even his own de- 
pendence for the time on the jurist who had shown such liberal clemency, 
warned even him, that such a decision would compel him to erase from 
the record he had made for this people and for after times, the commenda- 
tion he had kindly bestowed on the judge, and to send his name blackened 
down the course of history. Do you believe that the prisoner who, on his 
own showing, shot a good and upright man; who dogged him at night; who 
went to church to murder him; who lay in wait in front of his home to 
butcher him — if he had felt secure of immunity, would not at the time of that 
decision, instead of threatening his honor's name with infamy, have sent 
one of these cartridges tp his heart ? That is for you to judge, with the 
scene fresh in your remembrance. Do you think, when my friend Mr. 
Davidge was delivering that masterly, earnestand conclusive argument 
against him, bringing home his guilt as a murderer, if he had held that 
charged pistol in the dock, feeling safe, as he professes to have felt in the 
case of President Garfield, in relying on his assumed insanity, that he would 
have paused to practice, before he had aimed at him another of the 
cartridges which he drove through the backbone of the President? Do you 
think the man, who when one of your number was bowed in grief beneath the 



shadow of death, which had darkened the lighl of hie home, passed out in 
front of the jury, uttering thai ribald boasl over the plaster cast that was 
to transmit his name to after times, would not even then, if it had occurred 
t<. him that he could safely Berve a purpose of hia own, and terminate 
this trial, have pointed thai pistol at the juror? True, as in President 
Garfield's case, il would have been in no Bpirit of ill-will to tin- juror, 
but Bimply of good-will to himself. It would have given him a few more 
months "I" life, and increased the chances of final escape, through the 
difficulty of again impaneling an impartial jury. The prisoner Bhowed 
his idea of mercy to others, when, during the trial, in one of hie brutal 
outbursts of passion, impiously and blasphemously, he menaced an act 
of God which should end the case and averl a conviction. Gentlemen, 
this i- the man of whom we arc to speak, and in whose behalf his coun- 
sel, with such touching pathos, invokes merciful and tender consideration 
nt your hands. The evidence shows him to have been cunning, crafty, 
and remorseless, utterly selfish from his youth up, low and brutal in his 
instinct-, inordinate in Ids love of notoriety: eaten up by a lust for money 
which has gnawed into his soul like a cancel ; a beggar, a hypocrite, a 
canter, a swindler, a lawyer who, with many years of practice in tWOgreal 
cities never won a cause, and you know why; a man who lias left in every 
State through which he passed, a trail of knavery, fraud, and imposition ; 
a man who has lived at the expense of others, and when he succeeded in 
getting possession of their funds, appropriated them to his own private use, 
in In-each of every honorable obligation and every professional trust; a man 
capable of mimicking the manners ami aping the bearing of a gentleman ; 
who bought at pawnbrokers' -hops the cast-off clothing, for which he paid 
only when his credil elsewhere was exhausted ; and then, with his plausi- 
bility of religious cant, his studied skill as an actor, Ins unscrupulous self- 
commendation, drifting about from State to St at e, professing to be en- 
ed in the work of the Lord ; a man, who as a lawyer, collected doubt- 
ful debts by dogging the debtor, pocketed the money asagainst his clients, 
and chuckled over their credulity in trusting him ; a man who pawned 
counterfeit watches as gold, to eke oul a professional livelihood; a man 
capable even ol endeavoring to blasl thenameofthe woman with whom 
I,,, had Blepl for years, and whom he acknowledges to have been a true and 
faithful wife ; capable of palming himself off upon the public, upon Chris- 
tian associations, upon Christian churches from city to city, as a pure and 
aprighl man, though he had -pent years in shameless fornication ; a man 
w ho afterwards, when he wished to gel rid of his wife, consulted the com- 
mandments of God, and reading "Thou shalt not commit adultery,*' went 
out and committed i< with a prostitute. He thought it needful thai his 
wife should be " removed." Fortunately for her, it did nol come to the 
necessity of the form of " removal " which he applied to President Gar- 
field. He was COntenl with that which he could procure for himself '»)' a 



safer crime, and afterwards appeared before the judicial referee as a wit- 
ness to estabisli the marriage, and, as the record shows, produced the pros- 
titute to prove the adultery. He is proved by his own witness to have 
been so void of all honor, so possessed of the spirit of diabolism, that he 
was capable at the age of eighteen of stealing up behind his own father, 
giving him a cowardly blow when seated at his own table, and relying 
upon the fact that he was then a larger and stronger man than the father, 
as the latter rose, exchanged blow after brbw with him, and Avhen the old 
gentleman by. a fortunate stroke drew blood on his face, the son at once 
surrendered — a coward, then as now. The spirit in which at forty lip fired 
at Garfield, was the spirit in which at eighteen he struck his father from 
behind. This too, bear in mind, was over a year before he entered the 
Oneida Community, to which Mr. Scoville refers the date of his pretended 
insanity. It was seventeen years before the menace to Mrs. Scoville, with 
the ax, in 1876 ; before which time, as she finally testifies, she never had 
any thought that he was not in Ids right mind. 

That was the occasion, when he lifted his ax against a lady, who, however 
unfortunate her present position, as his sister and Mr. Scoville's wife, has 
my sincere sympathy and respect, for her thankless devotion to this brother 
from childhood up. For her fidelity to him here, I have nothing to say 
but words of kindness and regard. This is the same man, who afterward 
and on another occasion, illustrated the same spirit of malignity, by striking 
his own brother. 

Mr. Scoville. Judge Porter, one moment. If the court please, I want 
to call attention to one thing on page 405, where at the bottom of the page 
Mrs. Scoville said that she visited him at Ann Arbor and I was trying to 
reason with him and was laboring with him in regard to giving up those 
ideas, " I thought it would be the ruin of him if he went to that place, and 
I told him so ; and I wanted him to continue with his studies and go on 
quietly, as a young man should, and let all that stuff go. I could not in- 
fluence him a particle. At last I made up my mind that the man was 
crazy, from the way he acted and talked to me ; and I told my uncle that I 
should give no more attention to trying to turn him from that idea ;" that 
was when he was at Ann Arbor, before he went to the Oneida Community 
at all. 

Mr. PoktePw So I understood her ; but that was on the examination by 
//'/• husband and his brother-in-law, uncorrected by her cross-examination. 
Mrs. Scoville was an honest woman ; and however biased she might natur- 
ally be by her feelings and affections, she did not refrain on cross-exam- 
ination from frankly admitting the truth as it was. I have no doubt that 
she thought these boyish ideas were crazy, at the time, crazy in the popular 
sense ; that it was a crazy thing in him to do what his father wanted him 
to do; that it was a crazy thing in him to believe what she did not believe; 



thai it was a crazj thing in him to regard John II. Noyes more favorably 
than she did. But we are dealing with the question of actual insanity. 
Thai is ilif question for you to consider, And :it page 17_'. after relating 
the ax story *of L876, she testifies in these words: 

lathi was not >'" his right mind." 

Thus much for the interruption. I am glad it occurred. It enables me 
to verify the fad <>t which I was speaking. How natural was her feeling, 
know ing bis intense depra\ it y, she mighl well ask, can this he i lie sane 
act of m j brother, who owes me so much, whom [have befriended from child- 
hood, whom I haveinduced my husband to befriend, to liberate from jail, 
t.» deliver from the Oneida Community, to furnish a rout' to cover his head, 
when no other roof in Christendom was at his command? Can it he that 
he, merely because I raise a stick of wood, hut with no intention of strik- 
ing him with it, is ready to lilt his ax againsl my life? Well mighl -he 
be alarmed. True it was an alarm which soon subsided; hut "■< know 
what ■■</>• did not, (hut the menace t«> her was in keeping with the assaull 
on his lather, from whose table he received his daily bread, and beneath 
whose roof he slept. He denies the truth of the ax story, told by hi- 
ter; hut when his oath and hers conic in collision, you will have no diffi- 
culty in determining which of them is to he believed. Truth and falsehood 
m\ er harmonize. Mr. Heed, appreciating the utter folly of the contra lie- 
lion of Mrs. Scoville by the prisoner, offers the lame apology that his 
client had probably forgotten it. What ! forgotten that five years ago, 
at hi- Bister's own house, he had menaced her life, and menaced it with an 
uplifted ax ! That is like his first address to the American people, in which 
he justified the killing of the President as a political act, and forgot to 
plead the Divine inspiration ami command, which he now sets up as his 
defense. That firsl address was dated eighteen </</>/.< befon th, as- 
sassination. I read from page 216 of the evidence: 

" In the President's madness lie has wrecked the grand old Republican 
party, and for this I,, dies." So in his second address, delivered to Mr. 
Reynolds sixteen ilmjs after //<< assassination, the Divine command was 
still forgotten. I read from page I L09, what he there says of the murder: 

•• It was my own conception <ni<l execution, and whether righl orwrong 

I lake I lie entile | e-po|i -i 1 >i 1 i ' V of it. 

"CHARLES GUITEAU." 

Astounded as he was on learning from Reynolds, that men of all parlies 
united in regarding his crime with loathing and abhorrence, he wrote an- 
other address on the following day, in which he says, at page 1 1 18: 

l/y soli object in removing General Garfield was to unite the contend- 
ing factions of the Republican parly, and keep the v;<>\ eminent in their 
control." 



Even in his then desperate condition, he had "forgotten" the Divine 
command, but there is a faint dawn in a single phrase, of the Oneida 
Community idea of inspiration, stolen from the "Herean" of John II. 

Noyes: 

" I have got the inspiration worked out of me" 

Gentlemen, we have seen what this man was at the age of eighteen, 
when he fought his father. We have seen what he was at the age of 
thirty-five, when he raised an ax against his sister. Let us see what he 
was two years before he murdered the President, as his character is re- 
vealed to us by his own witness and brother, John W. Guiteau. At that 
time the prisoner w r as thirty-eight years of age. His brother, a worthy 
and respectable citizen of Boston, had from time to time befriended him. 
The prisoner called at his office, and John kindly remonstrated with him 
against his habit of deceiving and imposing upon boarding-house keepers. 
The prisoner proposed to fight, but John declined, and requested him to 
leave the office. As he was going out, he impudently told John, he was a 
thief Irritated by the epithet, he gave him a slight slap with his open 
hand. The prisoner turned and gave him a blow in the face, for which, 
John says, he respected him, for he did not suppose he had so much pluck. 
You will remember that the record discloses no other instance, in which he 
ever struck a first blow at anybody, his own father included, except from 
behind. He relapsed, however, at once into his usual cowardice, and though 
John was the smaller man, he tells you, at page 497, that he hustled him 
out of the office very roughly — "took him by the collar very forcibly and 
heartily, and threw him down stairs." 

The next meeting of the two brothers was in the cell of the prisoner, 
after he had waylaid and murdered the President. 

We next find him, so far as we are enabled to trace him in the evidence, 
indulging in the same spirit of cowardly malignity and violence, when, af- 
ter six weeks of cool and wicked deliberation, freshly reminded of the 
claims of President Garfield upon the countiy for which he had fought 
bravely and manfully in war, and which he had eminently honored in 
peace; that country of which he, differing in that respect from many of 
his associates, had sought the pacification; that country, in whose behalf, 
as one of the leaders of the American bar, he made the first great 
argument which, in conjunction with that of Judge Black, moved the Su- 
preme Court of the United States to a decision, sustaining the policy of 
pacification and ending the strife of war. That statesman, wdio had been 
so long in the service of the country, and coming out of it with a name so 
untarnished, that when he was not even a candidate for office, he was taken 
up by a great party, and nominated to the place, to which no strict and rigid 
Republican could have at that time been elected; whose unforeseen nomi- 
nation was taken up with one accord by the American people, and through 



8 

the spontaneous recognition of the integrity, the ability, the patriotism, the 
fidelity, and the honor of the man, through such aid us he received fi 
the Democratic party, without which he never could have been elected, 
was elevated to the Presidency, by a vote so clear and so strong that all 
the people Baid, amen; and this miserable and Belfish rogue is for >ix 
weeks, and, as he says, without the slightesl honest ground for personal 
malioe toward him, plotting and plotting, with do counsel, excepl thai of 
the fiend of darkness who prompted the suggestion, plotting, plotting 
through those long week- the murder of the President, la there any dis- 
pute aboul this? He swears to it, as a witness in his own cause. He 
complain^ that I call him an assassin. I called him an assassin, from the 
moment he swore he was one, and so do you. The law calls him an as- 
sassin. I had no reserve in treating him as a murderer from the moment 
he, swearing in his own behalf, said, I did commit a BO-called minder. 
and intended to commit it. 

Again, what do you find in the other evidence to throw light upon the 
acknowledged fact, [f you take his oath, flatly contradicted by almosl 
every witness he has called to the stand, in one particular or another — 
which would itself condemn him as wholly unworthy of credit — accepting 
his oath, lor two weeks after /", not the Deity, formed the conception of 
murder, he knelt every night at the foot of God, with whom, he is now, as 
he says, verv well satisfied, so far, hut no farther — begged to have him 
work a miracle, in order to advise him whether after all this was not an in- 
spiration of the devil; and, as the Deity worked no miracle, he concluded 
that the murder which he meditated was an inspiration of God; and then, 
from the first day of .June, was so settled in Ins purpose of murder, s,, fixed, 
that he would have l.utchered him on the first opportunity, although he 
knew that the next minute he woidd himself lie made the victim of just 
popular indignation. Yet, though he had SO made up his mind on the first 
of June, you find him declaring to Mr. Brooks at midnight of the day of 
tin murder, that for si\ weeks he had meditated the assassination, and for 
six weeks ha, | been struggling and agonizing and praying to God to deliver 
him from this diabolic temptation. 

Praying to God! [f you could conceive of a prayer to God from this 
prisoner, I am sure you cai t conceive of one that he should he de- 
livered from his purpost of cold-blooded and deliberate murder of the 
President, who had refused him the consulship at Paris. He tells yon he 
was praying from night to night, and from day to .lay. \\ e ha\e infor- 
mation of a few prayers lie has made. The most earnest he ever made in 
his life, was I hat to >/<>", on Sat urda\ , w it h tears unbecoming manhood, to 
granl him a safe deliverance and pronounce him a lunatic. It is said that 
he made some pra\ ersal the Christian Association meetings and at the lec- 
ture room of the Rev. Dr. .Mac Art hnr. I believe it is pretended even, that 
he prayed at Mr. Moody's meetings. There he was an usher, and nothing 



more. In all the record of his life, aside from this, surrounded as he was 
by boarders, by guests, by brothers and sisters, by Reed and Scoville and 
Mrs. Scoville, there is no record of any prayer to God, if he made even one. 
Do you really think his knees would even now show the unhealed scars of 
his later prayers ? 

The Prisoner (Interjecting excitedly). I pray every night of my life. 
If you would pray some you would be a better man. You wouldn't be 
here for blood money. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Do you believe that he is a man of God 
and a man of prayer ? It is the pretence of a perjured and forsworn 
witness, on which this defense rests. Has he been in a prayer-making 
mood at any time, until he came before you as a witness, since he has 
been in this court-room? You have been compelled to live with this man, 
two and a half months of your life, each man of you. You have been im- 
prisoned, isolated from your families, from your wives, from your children, 
held together as if you were criminals, because the law required yoiir seclu- 
sion. Each of you twelve has been confined, during the last two and a half 
months of your lives, not for any wrong of yours, but for that man's act. 
He is the culprit, and so much of the lives which God gave you has been 
cut off, and by him. You little thought when that bullet was flattened 
against the spine of President Garfield, that you were to suffer a share of 
the penalty, and that you were to have so much stricken from your own 
lives. That has happened to each of you. True, it is in obedience to the 
mandate of the law ; but it was through his wrong. You have performed 
a painful and a bitter duty. One of you has performed it under the gloom 
of the shadow of death. That others have not, though equally exposed, is 
due to the merciful providence in which you trust, though the prisoner does 
not, except in mockery. He tells you, gentlemen, that he did pray; that he 
prayed for six weeks. What for ? If he had made up his mind so fixedly 
on the 1st of June, that he would have murdered the President, though he 
were to perish the next instant, what was he praying about ? He tells 
Brooks that he w r as praying to God, as his ultimate judge, to know, if what 
of murder he had been premeditating was right or wrong. Not a word of 
inspiration, not a word of God's command. All that he had forgotten ; 
and yet you remember he swears that his insanity came on the 1st of 
June, and that it left him within an hour after he murdered the pre- 
sident. From that hour he has been a sane man. Strangely enough, 
when he recovered his sanity, he remembered all the incidents of his in- 
sanity, and he remembers, among other things, that after he made up his 
mind unchangeably, to murder the president, on the 1st of June, he was 
praying to God, down to the very day of the assassination, to know 
whether he was doing his duty or not. I am reminding you of these i hings, 
gentlemen, in order to connect with them some of the other circumstances, 



LO 

which have already flashed across your minds. This man who believed, 
or professed to believe, thai the God who spoke to Moses, and the Saviour 
who summoned Paul to replace the Judas among the twelve who had 
been false to hi^ trust, tells you on bis own oath, thai he meditated the 
means with cool deliberation : thai ht contrived beforehand hi^ infamous 
partisan vindication; thai /" prepared the papers which were to justify 
him as a Stalwart, before God and man ; :m< 1 thai ht revisedbia inspired 
book of Truth and altered it. Whal ! Alter the immediate and direcl 
inspiration of God ? Blotting oul hell in this book, as a deliberate pre- 
liminary to the murder of Presidenl Garfield, and substituting the- milder 
term perdition ! Does inspiration need alteration^ by the very man who 
ived it direcl from the Deity? Making his preparations for the 
crime, engaged in the work of the Lord, borrowing the money on false 
pretenses with which to execute thai work, representing thai he wanted it 
to pay board hills, and getting fifteen dollars, ten dollars of which were 
appropriated t<» the purpose of murder ! 

Again, we find the same man practicing with his pistol on the riverside. 
What for ? I tear in mind, genl lemen, he has told \ on again and again t hat 
the question and the only question for you is, " Did the Deity fire thai shot, 
or did I . Ill did/there is no punishment thai would he too quick and 
severe foi me. If the Deity, you cannot try Him for it."' No. you cannot. 

Uut who was it that was practicing, in order to make sure of a deadly 
aim. the Deity, or the prisoner in the dock? Who shol at those osiers, 
who sent them swaying down as Garfield did? Who hit them? Who 
fired t wenty times, in order to ace ii^t .Fin himself to the reporl of tin- pistol, 
to the end thai it should not stun him while he murdered the President, 
for he had things to say immediately alter, which were all prepared ? Who 
was 'n, who wen! to the depot on the L8th of June, with his hand in his 
hip-pocket, his pistol well wiped ami cleaned; this, too, after a good 
night's sleep, a refreshing morning bath, and an hour of practicing at the 
river hank; lying in wait afterwards to murder the president, waiting until 
he and his wife came in, and for once, for once and once only, even his 
malice was overcome, and he could not muster the courage to pull that 
trigger. This vras two weeks after God had issued the peremptory com- 
mand to murder Presidenl Garfield, and no danger to himself could averl 
hi- homicidal act. There is no diabolism so complete on this Bide of the 
infernal regions, bu1 there are ^till some remaining twinges of consch nee. 
He shrank, coward as he was, againsl murdering the man, while his wife 
was leaning upon his arm. lie faltered afterwards on a second occasion 
from murdering aim, because, as it happened, he had with him his two 

children, holding their father by the hand. 

Tin' irirs, and the only tears, he is known to have Bhed from boyhood, 
were for himself. The only evidences of humanity he has disclosed on 1 1 » i -» 
trial wire, thai he spared General Garfield when his wife was present, and 



11 

spared him when her children were by ; and, gentlemen, my firm belief is 
that the reason he assigns is as false as anything else he swears to. He knew 
that if he had fired then into Garfield's back, there would be no opportunity 
to appeal to Stalwarts. The whole army of the United States could not 
have protected him. If he had committed the murder then, what would 
have become of the plea of insanity? He knew that no force that General 
Sherman had at his command, could have prevented the American people, 
or at least those who had access to him, from tearing him limb from limb. 
There are occasions when human nature overrides the restraints of law, for- 
gets and ignores them. He did not care to bring that terrible horror upon 
him. He was a cringing coward. On the occasion of the murder, there 
was, as he says, a Cabinet meeting, consisting of the President and Mr. 
Blaine; but on the. other occasion, when Mrs. Garfield was upon the arm 
of the President, there were those attendant upon her, infirm as she was — 
making in his eyes a crowd around — there was no probable chance for 
that bull-dog to do its work, and allow him to get out of that depot alive. 
This man has no malice, you understand. He thought it would be an 
excellent place at church to remove the President. He would lift him 
right from the pew to Paradise. He had a great regard for President 
Garfield's soul ; he felt intensely in his behalf. He thought he was un- 
happy among these politicians, and he would elevate him at once to a better 
sphere. He saw it would not do to shoot through the doorway, not 
because it would endanger other people's lives, but because it > hdangered 
hi* own lif< . Well, he stays after the President leaves, and goes around 
to the window, having observed the pew and the seat of the President. 
He looks through, to see where he could stand and where he could shoot. 
It was that little church in which the President worshiped God, whom 
this man never worshiped ; that little church, where without ostentation 
the President went with his friends, according to his creed, not according 
to yours or mine. He went there the simple citizen of the United States, 
as an unpretentious creature of God, conscious of sin, and bowing in 
reverence to that holy name. Guiteau thought there he could shoot 
him — there and well; shoot hint safely. He would wait for him until next 
Sunday. He had his pistol in his pocket. " Next Sunday I will do it." 
Next Sunday came. God, who, as he says, inspired him to murder, so 
ordered it, that the President the next Sunday worshiped at Long Branch, 
where his sick wife was, and the murderer was baffled again. On the 
night before the actual assassination, this man, in perfect health, with good 
sleep, with good appetite, who had been discussing with Dr. Shippen at 
Mrs. Grant's table for a month, the various questions of interest, the re- 
vision of the New Testament, the situation of affairs at Albany, the prospect 
of extrication from the dead lock, had been turned out for defrauding his 
landlady, and had gone to the Riggs House, where, of course, he never paid 
his board, and never intended to, and then, as it was a very warm night, 



L2 

bad gone out to relieve himself from the pressure of the heat. He went 
where? To Lafayette Square. Well, as he only went t,, get cool, of 
course he did not need his weapon of death, but by inadvertence he 
diil put thai bull-dog pistol into his pocket, carefully wrapped up in paper. 
There he watched and waited until President Garfield came out. There 
was a preseni opportunity. The Almighty ruler of the universe, as he 
impudently pretends, had commanded him to do the murderous act, an 
act from which he would not have refrained, if it had cosl him his life the 
very nexl instant, and when, a^ he claims, the Almighty was urging him 
• in tn the deed, he held hack. I' was nighl ; dark as that night on which 
he conceived the cold-blooded purpose of murder; dark as the nighl on 
which the devil first whispered into his car the project of assassina- 
tion. President Garfield came <>ui to take an evening saunter alone; 
walked past him ami went on to the house of Mr. Blaine. In tin- alley, 
this assassin was lying in wait, like an Indian in ambush. Their was the 
armed murderer, and there his unconscious prey. " Why did you nol 
shool him when he went by? He was alone." "Idid not feel like it." 
Here again was the shrinking of the coward. He was in a vacillating 
mood. This was a murder, not, as he says, from ill-will to General Gar- 
field, but simply to make himself the idol <»!' the Stalwart party, the 
Republican party, and the American people, [f he did it when he was 
alone, nobody would know il was his act. tf he did it in the .lark, tl 
would nol be the notoriety which should attend President Garfield's 
death. Thus, through the cowardice and selfishness of the murderer, the 
Presidenl escaped tor the time, unconscious that at that moment he held 
his life upon the mere tenure of Guiteau's will. The assassin controlled him- 
self, simply because he thought it belter for himself / bul on reconsideration, 
while the Presidenl was in .Mr. Blaine's house, he came to the conclusion, 
•• I will do it. after all." He went back into the alley-way, and at first he 
would have had you believe il was a casual visit. In the end he admits 
that he was waiting for Garfield to come oul : thai he thrust hishandinto 
hi-> hip-pocket, drew out this pistol, with the means of taking live human 
live-, wiped it, tried it to see that it was in order, and held it iii readiness 
for his victim. The President after a time came out. There is the 
assassin, hiding in the alley- way. There is the dark sky above. There is 
no human witness. It had occurred to him, undoubtedly, in the mean- 
while, Even though there is nobody here, I can acknowledge the act to- 
morrow, ami by timelj retreal to-nighl secure myself againsl any outbreak 
of the mob. He evidently made up his mind to murder him when he 
came out. Bui when the Presidenl came, the Secretary of State 

was with him, arm in arm. Guiteau faltered. In a moment he could 
have been as near to him, a- I am to your foreman. He had bul to ad- 
vance a few steps, and the deed would be done. Nobody would suspeel 
him. He could have shol him in the back. Bul then- was a restraining 



l:'> 

power above ; there was a restraining power below. It had not yet been 
appointed in the providence of God, that this great crime should be con- 
summated. 

What does lie do ? He takes his cool observation. There are two 
men there. He came to kill but one, and that without a witness. He 
knows that he is an inexperienced marksman, having only practiced 
some twenty times in shooting, and he might not kill the President at the 
first shot, with time to kill Blaine afterwards. Who knew but Blaine 
might look back and seize him, or even in the righteous indignation 
of the occasion, lift his cane and strike him down. He thought on the 
whole, " It is a hot night ; Twill take him alone." The President and 
Blaine go on. This ingenious lawyer, this keen office-seeking politician, 
considering the matter, thinks he had better eavesdrop a little, even though 
he does not care then to kill, and he creeps up behind them, and listens to 
their conversation. He finds that they are arm in arm, and that they are 
both gesticulating earnestly. This, he would have you believe, excited 
him to murder. Excited him to murder ! Why, if God commanded it on 
the first of June, what need of such excitement '? But he tells us that the 
murder was due to the political situation. He would not have killed him but 
for that. When he saw Blaine earnestly gesticulating, and the President 
putting his arm upon his shoulder and talking kindly with him, he knew 
then, though he had only suspected it before, that we were on the eve of 
a civil war, and " that the only thing that could be done to save the Repub- 
lican party was to kill the President." He goes home. He has a good 
night's sleep. He forgets to tell us, when he is a witness on the stand, 
that it was a night of prayer, and that his knees were stiff with supplica- 
tion through all these weeks. He slept well. He rose early in the morn- 
ing, after having gone to bed at nine o'clock. 

He dressed himself; he went to the depot; disposed of his papers, ex- 
amined his pistol, and ascertained when the President was to leave. He 
had prepared everything. He put the address to the American people, in 
which he strangely forgets that God had commanded him to do this mur- 
der, in a place where it would reach Byron Andrews, felt for his letter to 
General Sherman, and arranged what? Plans for President Garfield's safety? 
Oh, no, no; Garfield was to be gently removed to Paradise. Plans for 
whose safety? That of Charles Guiteau, for which he tells you he cared 
nothing, nothing. He would have killed the President if he had known that 
he was to be torn in pieces that moment. He engages a hack to drive him 
out to the jail as his only place of.refuge, and then, in the same spirit of per- 
sonal vanity which Led him to buy a white pistol rather than a plain one, be- 
cause it would be more conspicuous'on exhibition in the Patent Office, has 
his boots properly blacked, then goes to the water-closet, feels for his pis- 
tol, examines it, wipes it, replaces it; comes out ami parades as a sentinel 
in front of the ladies' door; arranges all his plans; selects his station for 



14 

the murder, within easy distance of the President's back, when he -hall 
have passed in; listens t<> the conversation of the President and Secretary 
Blaine; is confirmed he would have you believe it was bj God— in the idea 
that it is his his duty to save the Republican party; steps quietly out of the 
way; allows them to pass in, supposing himself to b< unobserved, and then 
in the presence of thai Virginia girl, whom God sent there to witness and 
disclose the truth on this trial, Bneaks up behind the President, pulls the 
trigger, though Secretary Blaine was by his side, sees thai he does not 
fall, drives home the second bullet, sees thai he does fall, and turn- ti 
cape. To escape where ? To escape to the jail; and careful, in the very 
lasl moment, of his own safety, holds in hi- hand the letter to General 
Sherman, which shall instantly summon those to proted him, who were uol 

at hand to protecl the murdered President. He retreats to the d \ He is 

intercepted by an officer. He i- broughl back flourishing his letter toGen- 
erai Sherman, his only idea of secure protection, lie was right, for no 
Booner does lie pa-- beyond thai door, and i- recognized a- tin' man. than 
the cry rises, "Lynch him! hang the murderer!" lie hurries the 
officers and they hurry him, closing around him, until this "gentleman," 
as Mr. Scoville --alls him. this moral man, this truth-telling man. this man 
..I' God, this man of prayer, may be taken to the jail, protected by armed 
guards, such as would ordinarily resisl the populace, but nol perhaps in such 
an emergency, ami he rails upon tin Govt rnnn nt t<> protect him, though it 
hail no t protected the President, whom he had accused, had tried, and 
sentenced, ami had murdered. He has been very scrupulous, your honor. 
upon the question whether you had extended to him everj righl he has 
chosen to demand in this case, full constitutional protection, the la, 
freedom of speech, the perfeel impartiality, which in hi- view was to con- 
sist in making all the decisions in his favor, in permitting him to dictate 
your charge, proposing now to have you modify your instructions after 
you have passed upon them. He was quite willing to escape to jail, bu1 
\er\ averse to sitting in the dock, which he thinks a disparagement to a 
lawyer, a theologian, a politician, a man of God, a man of prayer, a patriot, 
a man whose name is to go on "resounding through all the a 

Mr. Scoville. II' the Court please, I want tocorreel one thing in Judg< 
Porter's statemenl of the evidence. At the bottom of page IT" this wit- 
ness, Mrs. Ridgely, states whal everj one of the wil uesses -aid substantially 
in relation to his conducl immediately after the shooting. Judge Porter 
says that he started to run away. I do not recollect a single witness who 
testified t<> that effect. I will read from the testimony of Mr-. Ridgely. 

M r. i '"i: 1 1 i:. I ha\ e not t ime for t hat. 

.Mr. Davidge. All understand the motive >>\ this, may it please your 
honor. I presume this is the beginning of a -erics of interruptions to 
the argumenl of-my learned friend who is closing this case. It is for your 



15 

honor to say whether yon will permit this at all, and, if so, to what extent 
yon will permit it. They have had an opportunity of commenting- on the 
evidence; the jury have heard the evidence. If my friend, Judge Porter, 
should through accident, and it cannot happen in any other way, fall into 
error, there will be no difficulty in correcting that error without interrup- 
tion on the part of these gentlemen. What I apprehend is, and I may as 
well state it frankly and openly, a studious system of interruptions, where- 
by it is hoped the force of the closing argument in this cause may he 
broken. 

Mr. Scovtlle. Gentlemen need not apprehend it at all, because there 
will be nothing of the kind. I waited until Judge Poller came to a pause, 
and simply wished to correct him by reference to the testimony. 1 am 
not disposed to interrupt at all so as to disconcert the gentleman. I simply 
want the testimony stated correctly. 

Mr. Davidge. I am very sure that Officer Kearney said that he caught 
the man going out of the door, and told him that he would not let him go 
out, that two pistol shots had been fired, and then put him under arrest. 
Are we to have a wrangle over the matter ? 

The Court. No; I shall have no dispute over the effect of the evidence 
at all. If Judge Porter, in reading the evidence, makes a mistake, it is 
proper to correct him. But in stating his understanding of the effect of 
the evidence, I do not think he ought to be interrupted, because it will lead 
to a running debate. 

Mr. Davidge. It would be to deny the closing argument. 

Mr. Scoville. If Judge Porter states that a certain matter is shown by 
the evidence and it is not, I have a right to show it. 

The Court. If he reads the evidence and makes a mistake, I think you 
can correct him; but there should be no running debate over the correct- 
ness of his recollection. 

Mr. Scoville. If I cannot refer him right to the page, I will not say a 
word; I will not put my recollection against his in any case. What I re- 
fer to is simply this 

Mr. Davidge. (Interposing.) I object ; I want to know whether the 
argument is to be allowed in its integrity, or whether it is to be cut to 
pieces by interruption ? 

The Court. No. 

Mr. Davidge. I agree with your honor that if Judge Porter makes a 
mistake in reading, they can refer to the record and put him right ; but 
if Judge Porter does nothing more than state his recollection of the evi- 
dence, that is what Mr. Scoville has been doing for five days. 

The Court. That is so. The argument must not be cut up in that way. 
The jury will have to decide if there is a difference in the gentlemen about 
recollection. It is only where the testimony is read verbatim and a mis- 
take made that it is proper to correct it. 



L6 

Mr. Scoville. [f the Courl please, I merely wish to >.i\ this: [f Judge 
Porter says, I <l" not care whether from his recollection or from referring 
\i, the evidence in detail, thai a certain thing i- a fad and shown by the 
evidence, and asserts it to be bo to the jury, and I can refer to the testi- 
mony of thai identical witness thai it is doI so, I claim the righl t'> do it. 

The Couet. It musl be a strong case in which thai privilege can be 
given. It would lead to a running debate. You have bad your say, and 
the jury musl decide as to which is the correcl representation of the testi- 
mony. It would doI do to allow a regular debate to go on over the effecl 
of the testimony. 

Mr. Scoville. It is simply a question of a statement of facl ; thai is 
all. [f the Courl phase, we have no opportunity whatever of correcting 
these things hereafter. I shall not interfere unless I COriSlder il material 

and I am certain a misstatement has been made. 1 have simply wanted to 
ii the Tact-, and I do uot desire to have the jury take the statements 
of counsel or-my own statements. Wo have here a large mass of testi- 
mony. The jury cannot remember it. It may be thai the argument 
should proceed without interruption. Whether that is so or not, I wish 
to Btate that counsel interrupted me one hundred and forty-five times, and 
I was perfectly content with it whenever a question of facl came in. That 
i- the actual uumber of times. I did nol object to it once. 

Mr. DavidGE. That was only where you were reading testimony. 

Mr. Scoville. I have only interrupted the gentleman twice, and I shall 
not interrupt him at all unless 1 consider it material. 1 say it was no1 the 
testimony of a single witness 

The Couet. (Interposing.) You cannot discuss thai question in the 
middle of the argument. 

Mr. Scoville. Bui I have a right to refer to the testimony. 

Mr. Dwiim.i . No one ever heard of such a practice. 

TheCouBT. No. 

Mr. SCOVILLE. I will refer you to the ease of Mary Harris, when I>is- 
triet Attorney Harrington attempted to misstate facts. To this Judge 
Bradlej objected, and as the district attorney persisted, the Courl told him 

that if he did no! -top he would put him in charge of the 1'nited State- 

marshal. I propose to have this question decided here as to whether 
Judge Porter -hall go on and misrepresent fact- to this jury. 

.Mr. Davidge. Your honor must Bee the purpose of this interruption; it 

musl be apparent to all mind-. 

The Couet. Lei .Indue Porter proceed. We cannot have a running dis- 
cussion in the midsl of the argument. Proceed, judge. 

The Pbiboneb. I refer the matter to the jury. I guess they understand 

that evidence about a- g I as any one. The policeman seized me simul- 
taneously with my putting up my pistol. 



17 

Mr. Porter. This man appeals to you to violate your oaths in the face 
of what he swears to. He swears to facts which prove him a deliberate, 
wicked, malicious murderer. He swears to facts which prove that he was 
a coward; that he did not commit the crime without providing for his 
own personal safety. These precautions were well and wisely taken. They 
were steps which probably would not have occurred to one other criminal 
in the United States. I do not think that one other man, in meditating the 
murder of the President, would have gone so far as to suppose that he 
could command the Federal Army for the purpose of shielding him from 
the danger to which he had exposed himself. They say he was crazy. Yet 
he judged rightly. He knew what that murder meant. It meant political 
revolution. It was committed with that view. It meant a change of ad- 
ministration. It meant, according to his ideas, the sweeping out of those 
who were in office, and the introduction of those who should owe their 
elevation to power to him. He evidently believed that he was a fair type 
of mankind, that they were all masked, that they were all playing a part, 
and that whatever promoted their own interests, they would defend and 
reward. Believing that, which the tempter had whispered in his ear, 
he took the steps which he thought would save him from the instant pun- 
ishment, that he was conscious of deserving, confident that in due time 
those benefited by his act would come to his rescue. 

The Prisoner. This is a good time for me to say that I am the only 
man that has not been benefited by the new administration. 

Mr. Porter, He is not benefited b}^ it. He will not be benefited by it, 
until the day comes when the law shall speak and he will be silent. Then, 
if he be like the man he murdered, a good man, worthy to be removed to 
Paradise, he will inherit the benefit which rewards the just. He evident- 
ly expected to be benefited. Has not he told you again and again, that he 
was to be benefited in the advertisement and sale of his book ; second, in 
the recognition he should receive for elevating President Arthur to the 
successorship, which he claims to have been his act ; third, the pardon 
which he now probably expects, even in view of these facts, from Presi- 
dent Arthur for the offence, of which he is now in peril of conviction. He 
professes to believe that the government counsel are in conspiracy to con- 
vict him. His pretense is that we suppressed evidence in his favor. His 
actual ground of complaint is that we did not suppress the evidence which 
crushes him to the earth, if you concur with us as to its effect. 

The Prisonki:. How about that note-book which was suppressed ? 

Mr. Porter. Gentlemen, it is perhaps well that, among the multitud- 
inous falsehoods and misstatements, which for the last two months we have 
heard from the prisoner and his counsel, a brief reference be made to some 
of them. I do not propose to deal with Mr. Scoville or Mr. Reed. This 



IS 

looms immeasurably too high, to allow us, in the final argument to the 
jury, i" bring them into the discussion, excepl where it becomes necessary 
incidentally in considering the guill or innocence of Guiteau. Bui it has 
been asserted by him and by Mr. S oville, thai the counsel f or the govern- 
menl have been acting in this matter on the pledge of extraordinary fees. 
• ri ntlemen, it i- well, merely because the purpose of the allegations was 
i" affecl your minds unfavorably, to put a quietus upon these statements. 
Colonel Corkhill i- the United States attorney for this District, and has 
been so for years. He has very importanl and responsible duties to 
discharge. Where he has reason to believe that crime has been commit- 
ted, ii is bis duty to make investigation and to presenl proper cases to the 
consideration of the grand jury. II' they, on investigation, find them to 
be cases calling for indictment, it is t lit* duty of the United States attorney 
i<i have them submitted, in due course of law, to a petil jury for determin- 
ation. Colonel Corkhill, with every citizen of Washington, and almosl 
every citizen of the United State-, was shocked by the telegraphic intelli- 
gence that the Presidenl had been assassinated. It was his business to as- 
certain by whom. He did so. // turned out fli"' hi madt n<> mistake. 
There was but one man, among the fifty millions of Americans on thai 

■lav. who was capable of si tine Presidenl Garfield in the hack, and thai 

man was Charles .Juiiu- Guiteau. 

The Prisoner, lie was the only man who had Divine authority to do 
it. A great many wqnted to do if. 

Mr. Porter. It was his business, as United State- Attorney.!-' ascer- 
tain the circumstances of the murder. He did it. He consulted, as was his 
duty on so momentous an occasion, with the then Attorney-General oi the 
United States. 

Tl e lirst thing was to learn i he exact fact-, and they could only be ascer- 
tained in detail from the murderer. He had admitted the aol : he had 
done ii over his own signature. He had frankly avowed that it was a 
political homicide, for political ends, and to change the administration. 
Very naturally, there u as a deep feeling of alarm, as usual in such a 
he might not he alone in the crime. Political revolutions are rarely wroughl 
through assassination, excepl in confederacy, as a resull of conspiracy. Re- 
cently one of tin' crowned head- of Europe had been openly assassinated in 
the presence of his troops and the greal officers of the empire, [t was found, 
that there w as a communistic, socialistic, or nihilistic organization, in confed- 
eracy with the assassin. In repeated instances the same thing had happened 
in other countries.* It had happened in our own country in a memorable 
case, after the close of the civil war, and there too it was found thai confed- 
erates were parties to the crime. Entertaining these apprehensions, the then 
Attorney-General Benl the chief of the detective Ben ice to the prisoner at 
midnight. Thai morning the President was alive and well: that nighl he 



19 

was lying prostrate, speechless, helpless, and mortally wounded. The de- 
tective entered the cell. This gentlemanly, and moral, and Christian, and 
praying prisoner remonstrated against the intrusion upon so distinguished 
a person as Mr. Charles Julius Guiteau, to interrogate him about so 
trivial a matter as the murder of the President a few hours before. He, 
however, condescended in the end to answer the questions. You have 
heard the testimony of Mr- Brooks. Guiteau avowed the act and his 
(motive; he stated it was purely political and patriotic. The witness says, at 
page 1728, that Guiteau told him, "He was lying in wait for him one night 
near the White House; that the President came out, and his first impulse 
teas to kill him then. The President was alone and he could have done it, 
but somehow he was restrained from doing it." He did not allege that 
God had commanded it. //< made no preU use of inspiration,. He claimed 
that he shot him " from patriotic motives to unify the party." The Attor- 
ney-General went further. It turned out in the investigation that Guiteau 
had resided in Chicago; that he had studied law with General Reynolds, 
an eminent member of the Illinois bar, a gentleman whose brother had 
been appointed to an office under the government. A telegram was sent 
asking him to come to Washington, as it was supposed that he would be 
more likely than another, to ascertain whether there was in fact any social- 
istic or communistic plot at the bottom of the homicide. General Rey- 
nolds came. He saw the Attorney-General, Mr. Secretary Lincoln, and 
Mr. Secretary Kirkwood, members of the Cabinet. They gave him their 
instructions. He conferred also with Colonel Corkhill, and obtained per- 
mission from him to visit the jail. He did so, and heard the statements of 
the prisoner on two successive days. He reduced them to writing. He 
made notes in the presence of the prisoner, who had long known him. 
He did not tell him his object, further than that he was stimulated by curi- 
osity, and that it was by the government's permission that he came. It 
is said, by counsel, that he did not deal frankly with the prisoner; that 
he was a spy, and that he was attempting to deceive the prisoner. He 
was first charged with falsehood, but that was retracted. All that he .-.aid 
in relating the conversations the prisoner has himself confirmed from the 
dock He complains, however, that General Reynolds did not treat him 
like a </' nth man. 

The Priso er. I did not say it was all true. I said it was generally 

true. 

.Mr. Pouter. The material fact as to the conversation is, that it teas 
generally true. But there are two other very material facts. One is that on 
the 18th of duly, immediately after the first conversation, Guiteau wrote an 
address to the American people, which is here now in his own handwriting, 
and which is absolutely fatal to his present defense-. Another important 
fact is, that on the following day, after reflecting upon the line of defense 



20 

to which he should resort, he wrote a letter, in which he, for the first time, 
hints the word " inspiration," and even then forgets that he killed General 
Garfield by GocVs command. That paper is before you. Every letter and 
syllable is written by the hand of Charles J. Guiteau, and over his signature. 
That letter is equally fatal. They both prove the falsehood of his defense 
af supposed inspiration. They both prove his actual motive. They both 
point unmistakably to cold-blooded, deliberate, and well-planned murder. 
What Colonel Corkhill has done, has been to prove these facts, after he 
dad ascertained them. It so happened that the original papers were re- 
:urned to Attorney-General MacYeagh. When counsel for the government 
first conferred together, those papers were not before us, and we did 
lot know what were their contents, nor what had become of them. 
FJiey could not be found at the department, and it was not until the 
;rial was far advanced, that Ave were enabled to trace them through the 
lid of General Reynolds. It happened that in the confusion of leaving 
Washington, they had been intermingled with a large number of other 
>apers which had not yet been assorted. They were afterwards brought 
lere, produced, and verified. If those papers had not been forthcoming, 
here might have been the chance of a dissenting juror, involving the 
lecessity of another trial. But providentially they are here, and are in 
evidence. In the face of those papers, I shall show that they cannot ask 
my member of this jury to dissent from a verdict of guilty, without asking 
iim to be untrue to his oath. 

The Prisoxkr. I am very glad those papers are here. Attorney-Gen- 
eral MacVeagh wouldn't have anything to do with the case. 

Mr. Porter. The prisoner evidently hopes to-day, that some member of 
he jury will, in the face of those documents, say that he was insane, and 
)elieve that he was commanded by God to do this murder. 

It is claimed by the prisoner that the United States attorney is prose- 
cuting him for the sake of inordinate fees. The counsel for the de- 
fense, who permit him to make these imputations, must know that the 
compensation of that officer is fixed by statute. He cannot draw one dol- 
lar from the United States Treasury, except as authorized by law, either 
? or himself or for anybody else. With the concurrence of the Attorney- 
general he can do so for certain purposes, and upon proper vouchers. 
His pay is fixed by law. What do you suppose, gentlemen, is the 
mormons sum that has tempted Colonel Corkhill to enter into this 
illeged conspiracy? Your pay is meager enough. These two months 
iiid a half of your lives that you have been imprisoned for an- 
other's wrong, entitle you only to a mere pittance, and yet the pay 
jf each of you is much larger than his. The law fixes his salary at two 
lundred dollars a year, with fees in each case, also regulated by law. 
What do you suppose to be his fee for the two months and a half that he 
las devoted to this trial? It is exactly twenty dollars. He has that sum 



21 

for the trial of each case, and that is what he receives for this entire trial. 
If he had consulted his personal interests, his honor will tell you thai it 
would have been, to have the trial completed in a day, or rather not to 
have had the case tried at all. Within these two months and a half, in 
the ordinary course of things, he mighl have had fifty trials disposed of, 
each bringing him twenty dollars. A great portion of our criminal trials 
are such as can be disposed of in a single day, each entitling the United 
States attorney to the same fee as in a case for the murder of the 
President. That is the position of Colonel Corkhill on this trial. 

Now, with regard to nry friend, Mr. Davidge? Hi< fee has never been 
received, nor one dollar of it. It has never been liquidated or proposed 
to be liquidated, lie ha- no existing claim against the government, and 
could not sue it under any circumstances. To meet these unfounded and 
reiterated assertions, which were made with a manifest and evil pur- 
pose, it is sufficient to explain to you the law. The government is 
supposed to he good and responsible, When there is occasion, the 
Attorney-General is authorized by law, to appoint special attorneys 
t0 aid i" the prosecution of particular causes or classes of causes. 
That power was in this case acted on by him, with the concurrence 
and approval of the President and the* Cabinet. It was exercised, 
by the designation of my friend, .Mr. Davidge, who is a resident of the 
District of Columbia, and of myself, residing in the City of New York, 
; " ;1 " 1 l1 "' ' oited States attorney in conducting the proceedings against 
tins prisoner. We were told, in the communication addressed to us by the 
Attorney-General, that it was by direction of the President and* the 
Cabinet. We accepted the appointment. By law there is a provision, in 
accordance with which, when we received our commissions, it was provided 
that the compensation we should receive, should be fixed by the head of the 
judicial department of the government. No sum was proposed, no 
designated fee. either absolute or contingent ; but simply a provision that 
lor the services which we should render, without reference to the result of 
the trial, we should receive such compensation as the Attorney-General for 
the time being, whenever the case should be tried, should fix as the fair 
TOtoe of our services. We can ask no more. He can grant no less. It 
rests simply in his judgment and sense of right whether we shall be paid 
anything or nothing. 

It so happened that I never, so far as I am aware, met the then Attorney- 
General. In the meantime, he has retired from office. It so happens, 
unfortunately for me, that I never met, even to exchange salutations, the 
present eminent Attorney-General of the United States. I know them 
both well by reputation. I know the present incumbent of that high 
office by having heard, as one of a large audience, and on a memorable 
occasion, an address delivered in the park grounds in the City of New 
York, such as few have heard from a living man. It was no political 



29 

address. It was a ju-t and generous tribute to a dead statesman, whose 
Dame has been illustrious incur publie history; :i name connected with 
revolutionary memories and with the highesl national honors. Ii was on 
the occasion of the unveiling of the statue erected to Alexander Hamilton 
by his son. On thai occasion, it so happened thai I saw, for the firel time, 
the preseni Attorney-General, and it. was refreshing to hear one Btat< sman 
speak of another, in terms which lifted statesmanship a< far above an re 
politics as the canopy of Heaven is above the earth which it spans. 1 
refer to the incident in no other spirit than this: To remind yon that it 
may by possibility be, thai one, nol when we were employed, Attorney- 
General of the United States, though he had held thai high distinction in 
tlic State of Pennsylvania, may be something more than a scheming 
politician; that he may not be open to the vile and unworthy imputations 
casi by tin- defense upon all connected with the government ; thai he may 
nol l>c ready to bargain with counsel for contingent fees, or to purchase 
witnesses, even if he had the funds wherewith to buy them, which the; 
court will tell you he has not. 

Gentlemen, our compensation will be assessed by an officer who i- 
upright, so independent and of such dear integrity, thai nothing I could 
say would prevent him from doing justice to us, or induce him to do 
injustice to the government. If it should so happen, that in his estima- 
tion, on a review of this trial, our services are worth m> mure than the 
prisoner ha-- ;b-i--iM them at, he certainly will not give more nor even as 
much as the law gives to Colonel Corkhill. If we have been unfaithful 
to our trust, if we have entered, as the prisoner and his counsel allege, 
into a conspiracy to convicl the accused of a crime "I' which we know 
him to l>e innocent, must certainly, in that event, I should regard the 
assessment of their value at twenty dollars as an over assessment by pre- 
cisely that amount. 

The Prisoner. That would be a large amount for you. 

.Mr. Porter. That is the estimation of the prisoner ; hut certainly the 
Attorney-General will give neither more nor less to Mi'. Davidge and to 
me, whether you acquil or convict. It will he a Bimple question with 
him what the services are worth, ami certainly if the prisoner and his 
counsel can so manage it this trial will not he broughl to a conclusion 
until another Attorney-General shall, in the ordinary course of human 
affairs, become the successor of the preseni distinguished incumbent. 
So much for the relations of the counsel, who are arraigned as parties to 
this alleged criminal conspiracy to enforce th<- law by securing the con- 
viction of a murderer. Gentlemen, I should saj one thing more in 
this connection: Counsel perfectly understood the importance of in- 
ducing you to distrusl the witnesses who were summoned in behalf of 
the government. For some two months the clai 'ous charge has come 



23 

from the prisoner, who moves as a convenient puppet, and says the things 
which Mr. Scoville, his brother-in-law, afterwards repeats -on his au- 
thority, that our witnesses were offered, or bargained for extraordinary 
sums, and were brought here for the purpose of convicting "this poor half 
imbecile," this gentlemanly, Christian, moral, prayer-making man, this 
murderer in the three-fold character of a lawyer, a politician and a theo- 
logian. Gentlemen, this is sheer fabrication. Not one witness, expert or 
otherwise, who has been summoned by us on this trial, whetherby tele- 
gram or by subpoena, has received or bargained for one penny more than 
the mileage from the place whence he came, and the one dollar and twenty- 
five cents a day during his attendance in Washington. The experts, Avho 
have testified on both sides, have been paid by the government the precise 
fees received by other witnesses. It seems that one of them on our side and 
two of them on the other, erroneously supposed they were entitled to 
something more. The law does not give it to them, and they cannot claim it. 
Their expectations were founded on a very natural mistake. They knew that 
in the States generally, when experts are summoned, they are paid by the 
State government the usual fees which they would receive from private 
parties. Their attendance involves time, labor, investigation, absence 
from business, suspension of their ordinary sources of income, and ex- 
penses, as to which, of course, they are not indemnified by the small 
pay which the government allows. They were mistaken ; they are en- 
titled to no more under the law, and no man among them has been prom- 
ised anything more, than the pay of an ordinary witness. Take for instance 
Dr. Gray, a gentleman who has two professorships, and who was sum- 
moned, not by his own procurement, but against his will, lie was called 
here to make an examination, to ascertain whether this man was sane or 
insane, lie was detained for two months and a half, paying his own ex- 
penses, which would not be expected of him in the case of ordinary parties, 
lie swears that he was not summoned to testify for the government ; hut 
for the purpose of making an examination and reporting whether the 
prisoner was sane or insane. No human being suggested that his 
testimony should be paid for. His attendance entitled him by law to 
mileage from his home, and one dollar and twenty-five cents a day for each 
day he was detained here. In order that you may appreciate the injustice 
of the imputation, you will remember that not one word was ever said to 
him by any one about compensation. He came here at the instance of the 
United States attorney, and simply because, without any knowledge of his 
views, we thought him the best and most experienced expert in the Hnited 
States. We knew his professional eminence ; that he had been in personal 
charge of qver 12.000 lunatics; and that he had been most signally suc- 
cessful. He was a man honored at home and abroad for his high charac- 
ter and distinguished learning and attainments. Are we subject to just 
reproach for summoning such a man to Washington to examine the 



24 

prisoner, and report the result? He came, and made a full, fair, and 
careful examination. There was no concealraenl ; there \\ .is no disguise. 
Dr. Graj told the prisoner who he was. He said to him frankly, thai he 
visited him :ii the instance of 1 1 1 « • government, bul it was for the pur] 
of finding out, by personal examination, whether he was Bane or insane ; 
thai he need nol answer any question he did no1 desire ; thai after In- had 
L r i\ en lii- answers, he would reduce them to writing and read them t « • In in, 
and make any corrections the prisoner mighl propose. The prisoner, as 
you remember, confirms this statement, and says thai Dr. Gray reported 
truly all thai transpired in his cell. The result was that Dr. Gray came to 
the clear conclusion thai the man was perfectly Bane. 

Now lei us see how munificently he is rewarded, for what they call 
this purchased opinion. 5Tou will remember thai he was here from a few 
days before the trial down t<> the close of the evidence, a period of more 
than t\v<> months, and the vouchers on lilt- show the amounl he received, 
$] 75. 20. Do you suppose this ran cover liis fare both ways, and liis ex- 
penses here. He has come and he has gone, when liberated from the dis- 
charge of his public duty. He has told you what he believed, from liis 
extended experience in charge of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, 
his observation of the insane for oyer thirty year-, and his personal exam- 
ination of the prisoner, thai he was sane beyond all question. 

Dr. Worcester and several others of the experts were summoned in he- 
hall' of the prisoner by his counsel, who learned from published interviews 
with them, thai they were of opinion, from what they had read in the 
newspapers, thai he was insane. They frankly admitted, when sworn, 
that they had come to Washington with those opinions. You remem- 
ber their, occupying seats assigned to the experts for the prisoner. 
They observed him from day to day in court. They went to the jail and 
examined him there. The}- saw how differenl the man was when in jail, 
from what he was in court, where he was on dress parade. I believe there 
were eighl of them in all, and they came to the conclusion that the man 
was -a ne and responsible. Counsel for the defendant were notified by them 
that this was their conclusion. They wished t<> be discharged. It would not 
do, however, after such a display, to dismiss them without a form of examin- 
ation, and the ingenious gentlemen on the other side devised a hypothetical 
question ; whether, assuming a state of fact-, unsupported by the evidence, 
they would then consider him insane - .-' You remember that though not 
in form, it was in effect, a question whether, if a man had a hereditary taint 
of insanity, exhibited insanity in his youth, exhibited it in his manhood, and 
at a subsequent date, being under the insane delusion that he was 
authorized and commanded l>\ God to kill the President, .proceeded, 
without cause, to kill him, such a man was sane or insane? Such 
a question answers itself. IT a man i< insane, he is of course insane. 

There thej chose to leave it ; nol to one of these eight experts did they 



25 

venture to put the question, wliether,/rom their examination and observa- 
tion of the prisoner, they believed him to be insane. Not to one of their 
witnesses, except Dr. Spitzka, was any such question addressed. Is not 
the omission significant and suggestive? We asked those of their experts, 
who could do so without inconvenience, to remain, and they testified, as 
our experts did, that on personal examination they found the prisoner 
sane. Under those circumstances, gentlemen, I hope you will not believe 
that the experts whom Mr. Scoville has selected as fit subject for indict- 
ment, as conspirators against the prisoner, really have been guilty of sell- 
ing themselves for money to the government, especially as the counsel 
and the prisoner do not agree, one of them fixing their imaginary price at 
$100 a day, and the other at 8200 a day, without a scintilla of evidence in 
support of either assertion. 

You appreciate the difficulty, gentlemen, of replying to counsel, with a 
lack not only of prearranged order and method, but of ordinary physical 
strength. For over nine days you have been addressed by three counsel 
for the defense, in" the opening and concluding arguments. Of course, 
upon the evidence, they could not hope for a verdict of acquittal. Such 
a verdict would shock all Christendom. 

The Prisoxer. (Interjecting.) A conviction would shock the public. 

Mr. Porter. The whole struggle has evidently been to persuade some 
■one man out of the twelve, the apostolic number, to be untrue to his 
trust. Who it is, they hope to mislead, I do not know. Mr. Reed made 
it very evident that he thought there would be one, or, perhaps more, and 
Mr. Scoville, I think, indicated his concurrence in such an expectation. 
Such hopes usually rest on idle conjecture, and sometimes find support in 
still more idle rumors. Each of you has been examined on oath, and both 
sides have accepted you as fail' and impartial jurymen. We have heard 
of nothing in the antecedents of either of your number, which would lead 
us to doubt his purpose to find a verdict according to the evidence. But 
we cannot fail to see, that the last seven days of argument has been mainly 
-addressed to the single point of procuring a division of this jury. Such a 
result, under the circumstances of this case, would be very unfortunate. 

Here is a confessed homicide, who establishes his guilt by his otvn oath. 
Is there a juror here, who will say upon his oath, that the prisoner is not 
guilty ! The prisoner calls his act an "assassination" over his own signa- 
ture. Can a juror find that it was "no assassination ? : ' Would there not be 
a strange discordance between the proof and the response? What a 
dialogue : 

Prisoner. Murder. 

Juror. No Murder. 
Prisoner. Sane. 
Juror. Insane 



I r< hi lemen, the only consequence of a disagreement by you, upon Buob 
evidence, would be to call the attention nol only of this country but of 
mankind to the fart, thai a human being could, under such circumstances, 
think it his duty t<> shield the assassin of the President. Bui what would 
be accomplished by a disagreement ? la it supposed that the government 
of this counl ry is not strong enough to press the case to a conclusion ? Adis- 
emenl would defeat the purposes of this particular trial, and it might 
compel other jurors in due time to succeed you in your labors, to become 
prisoners in their turn, as you have been, as the consequence of another's 
crime, to be secluded, as you have been, from their families and bush 
and to have ^> much cul out "l* their lives, simply because, when the 
prisoner's evidence establishes his sanity and guilt a juror declines so to 
find. 

The theory of the defense, as presented by Mr. Scoville, was plausible, 
but unfounded and illusory. He chose to embark his client's fortunes in a 
bark, which the prisoner with his own band has scuttled. The case is 
brought down by him to the single question, whether 'on the 2d day of 
July, 1881, the assassin believed that he was commanded by God to mur- 
der the President. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is all there is to it, ami that is 

what that jury will pass upon. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Y<>u perceive that the prisoner agrees with 
mi'. He saw it clearly from the beginning of the trial. It his counsel 
had the clear intelligence of the prisoner, they would have also seen it. 
ami concentrated their strength upon that single i-sue. 

Gentlemen, lei me Buggesl to you, in reply to the remarks on your 
province, that a juror's oath is not an idle form, nor is his an irrespon- 
sible trust. I do not remember who ii was that first suggested, what 
has often been repeated, -'that under the various forms of government, 
of Anglo-Saxon origin, the ultimate security of all rights, all liberties, 
all protection is to be found in the jury box." In yonder Capitol, 
districts are represented in the House, States in the Senate, but in neither 
the body of the American people. There are under our form of gov- 
ernment two potential representatives "l" tin people. The one is the 
head of the nation — the President of the United States; the other is 
found in the jury, to which, in the last resort, our most essential rights, 
whether of life, liberty, or property, come for enforcement and protec- 
tection. For this purpose, under the operation of our laws, you are here 
to-day representing the American people, of whom the prisoner talk--" 
clamorously. I do not mean, of course, thai you represent them in 
any other sense, than as clothed with their authority, selected from their 
number, and bound to respeel and enforce the lawSfthey have ordained, 
to maintain the rights they have declared, ami observe tin' obligations 



27 

they have imposed. It is true that you are not to be influenced lit 
any degree by popular opinion, whether it be or be not in harmony 
with the dictates of your own judgments and consciences. It some- 
limes happens, however, that issues arise involving great questions 
of right and wrong, on which all honest and right-minded men are 
substantially agreed. It seems to us that this is one of those cases. 
The homicide arrested universal attention, because it was a brazen and 
bloody act ; not committed in the secrecy of night, but under the broad 
canopy of Heaven, in the open light of day ; because it was committed, 
not merely against the murdered victim, but in full view of his pri- 
vate relations, family relations, State relations, public relations, affect- 
ing the welfare and stability of the government itself ; so far, at least, 
as a change of political administration was sought to be affected by 
lawless violence. In such a case, it is not to be expected that jurors 
should regard the act with less loathing and abhorrence than other 
men. Aware of this, the prisoner has been clamorously assuring you from 
day to day, that the people of this country were now all on his sidt : 
that he was constantly receiving letters of approval, and large pecuniary 
contributions, and that the newspapers, from which you are excluded. 
but which he professed to be reading, holding them ostentatiously 
before him while he was watching the progress of the trial, were 
all declaring themselves in his favor. You may well have wondered 
how it was, that, while he was making these constant allegations, 
his counsel did not second his appeals to the public opinion, either of 
the city of Washington, of the District of Columbia, of the United States, 
or of mankind. I confess I have yet to see the first newspaper, published 
in this country, that ventures to defend the action of this prisoner. I have 
seen occasional articles before the trial began, and some since, ques- 
tioning whether he was not insane, but many more, and as I think very 
unjustly, censuring the court, and the administration of justice, because 
he was not already tried and convicted. 

Mr. Scoville. Does the Court allow that kind of talk to the jury? 

• Mr. Porter. I cannot permit these statements of the prisoner to pass 
without contradiction. I have been censured recently in numerous letters 
for allowing these statements before the jury to be uncontradicted. 

Mr. ScoviLia:. I want to know if Judge Porter is arguing to the jury 
or the Court, that is all. If he is going to testify now, I propose to give 
the same sort of testimony — I propose to give my letters. 

Mi-. Pouter. The gentleman is mistaken. He has already given his 
testimony. And you must bear in mind that Mr. Peed and Mr. Scoville 
have both occupied much of your time within the last six of the seven 
days, in deprecating your being influenced by public opinion, or the out- 
side sentiment of the country, and claiming that you or some of your 



28 

number should refuse to find a verdict of conviction, on the ground that 
otherwise a poor lunatic was being hurried on to the gallows. 

Mr. Scoville. If the Court please, Judge Porter is not permitted to 
give any sort of evidence at this stage of the case. If he is allowed to 
take that course I shall insist upon the same thing. 

The Court. I understand that Judge Porter's remarks are in reply to 
the prisoner's statement. To that extent I think it is admissible and not 
beyond that. 

Mr. Porter. Now, gentlemen 

Mr. Scoville. One moment, one moment ; I want to settle this ques- 
tion now. Now, if Judge Porter had made this statement in any other 
way, by putting him upon the stand to correct him, or anything of that 
kind, then it would have been proper. Now, if the prisoner made a 
statement here while the case was in progress of trial he had the op- 
portunity to put him on the stand under oath and ask him to produce 
these letters. We have now got to a stage of the case where we are 
arguing before the jury, and Judge Porter is producing what is equivalent 
to his deposition here in this case as evidence, as matter of fact. Now, 
I say if that is to be permitted to go on here for five minutes it can go on 
for an hour, and Judge Porter can occupy days with these statements 
that haVe no foundation in fact, that are not before the Court as matter of 
■evidence at all, and yet work them in just as sworn statements before the 
jury. 

The Court. No, I do not think he can go further than to simply con- 
tradict the prisoner's assertion that he was receiving commendations from 
the public and newspapers — to contradict that line of statements which 
the prisoner has constantly been giving to them. 

.Mr. Porter. Gentlemen, I call your attention to the fact that while the 
prisoner himself has been endeavoring to convince you that the public was 
on his side he 

Mr. Scoville. I propose to take an exception to these statements now, 
made with the permission of the court to this jury, and I wish the record 
to show that I have duly objected to the statements, and that the court 
permitting him to make them in the form and manner in which he has 
made them is excepted 1 o. 

Mr. Porter. I have made statements so far which have not been 
excepted to. I propose to go on and make another for the purpose of 
showing that I am right, and that you have acknowledged it. 

Mr. Scoville. Now then; I except now. I wish the exception to be 
noted on the record to the permission of these statements of Judge Porter 
to go to that jury. 



29 

The Court. What statements ? 

Mr. Scoville. The statements which he has made now, and which the 
record for the last three minutes shows probably as to what the public 
sentiment is as to what newspapers state as to his proving letters. I object 
to every one of those statements going to the jury, and ask to have them 
ruled out. 

The Court. 1 do not sanction any statement about letters received by 
him, statements of newspapers, or anything else except simply to contradict 
the prisoner's repeated statements. 

Mr. Porter. Gentlemen, I wish to call your attention to the argument 
of the counsel. If it were true, as the prisoner has alleged, that the 
American press are on his side, that the leading journals are on his side, 
why was it that his counsel, when they came to sum up to you, did not 
follow his lead, but insisted that you should not be influenced by public 
opinion ? 

Mr. Scoville. If the Court jdease, I insist upon a suspension of Judge 

Porter's remarks, so that I can get my exception ruled upon. Now, if the 
Court please, I understood your honor to say that you sustained Judge 
Porter in saying precisely what he has now said to that jury upon this 
ground: That the prisoner during the trial made statements substantially 
of the same character as to the opinions of the press and as to correspond- 
ence received by him, and thai now, when Judge Porter, in his address to 
the jury, states those things as facts which he says are true as to the cur- 
rent literature of the newspapers as to what they say upon this subject, as 
to private letters, when your honor permits those things to go to the jury 
and I attempt to call the gentleman to order and your honor still permits 
him to go on with those statements, that is what I desire to object to and 
take an exception upon. 

The Court. I have not given permission that those statements should 
go on at all. The statements were made before the exception was fully 
stated. 

Mr. Scoville. I have tried to talk at the same time with the gentleman, 
but I have not been able to get a word in. 

The Court. I know; but both counsel were talking at once, and I have 
been unable to hear your full statement. 

Mr. Porter. (To Mr. Scoville.) If you have any request to make, your 
request should be made to the Court. 

The District Attorney. Let me say one word. The prisoner, appear- 
ing as counsel for himself , is allowed not only to state what the public 
sentiment w T as, but he was allowed 

Mr. Scoville. He was not allowed to do anything of the sort, but he did 
it without being allowed. 



30 

The District Attorney. STes; but he appeared as counsel for himself, 
and in his address to t he jury he read exl racts from the .V< w York Hi raid, 
be read editorials, and he stated t.» the jurj what public sentimenl was, 
and he read private letters. Judge Porter's remarks were merely contra 
dictorj to that, and the gentleman has no righl to interrupl him <>r take 
excepl ions to it. 

Mr. s. i. \i i. if.. The gentlemen oughl to have objected. If the} did no1 
object to what the prisoner did, I objecl to what Judge Porter is doing. 

The Court. I know the prisoner said whal was objectionable, bul it 
could not be prevented. 

.Mr. Si <>\ li.i.i.. Cannol Judge Porter be prevented? 

The Coi bt. I think Judge Porter oughl nol to refer t<> the newspapers 
or to whal his letters contain on the Bubject. 

Mr. Porter. When be refers to them with a positive statement, can I 
n ol d en 3 it? 

The Court. Undoubtedly you can deny positive statements, but ;m\ 
statement as to what the newspapers contain or as to letter- i» nol allowed 
on either side. 

Mr. S< oville. I desire the record to show my exception. 

Mr. Porter. (Addressing the jury.) I will read what this man Baid at 
page i T in — - 

You ought to be ashamed of yourself — 

addressing my associate, Mr. Davidge — 

God Almighty will curse you prosecuting men for the mean, dirty way in which yon 
have done your work. Tliai u the unanit I merican press to-day. 

The Prisoner. That is a very light statement. I gave the jury a spe- 
cimen of public Bentimenl in my speech. That Philadelphia letter shows 
the case well. 

Mr. Porter. Here is a telegram which was read to you by him, and 
which appears al page i">7 - _'. It was read bj thi> prisoner in open Court, 
nol as a witness, bul as counsel for himself: 

Prisoner. Some ol the leading people of Am ider me a very fine fellow. 

La night al 8 o'clock I received the following telegram from Boston for the edifica 
lion "i this courl and jurj and the American people: (Read in 
M : Charles J. Gi n a u . Wat ' />. t '. 

■■ 01 i Boston 

The Prisoner. (Correcting the reading.) "All Boston." 

Mr Porter. (Continuing to read) — 

"sympathizes with you. You are yet to be President. 

•• A HOST OF ADMIRERS." 

1 don'l know bul two men in America who want me bung; one is Judge Porter, be- 
cause be expects togel $5,000; the other is Mr. Corkhill. Corkhill is booked to be re- 



31 

moved anyway, and he wants to get even with me, because he thinks I am the man 
that did it, It is raid I am too severe in my language. I want to say a word about 
that: " Woe unto you, ye hypocrites, scribes and Pharisees! How can ye escape dam- 
nation in hell? Ye generation of vipers! how can ye escape the damnation of hell? " 

Who said that? Who uses that language? The meek and lowly Jesus, the meek and 
lowly Jesus. I put my ideas in sharp language, and I have the example of the Saviour 
of mankind for doing it. lie called things by their right names. When any one as- 
vaulted Hon lie struck bark. He didn't lay down like a craven, nor I don't. 

The Prisoner. Correct. 

Mr. Porter. I did not intend to refer to that particular passage at this 
point, but I will. These are some of his representations, first, as to public 
sentiment; second, as to the opinion of the press; and, third, as to the Re- 
deemer of mankind. It is true that the Second Person of the Trinity, 
when for our redemption He assumed our form and made Himself our 
brother, did speak on topics which were appropriate to this case. I refer 
to the dialogue between the scribes and Pharisees — the men who made 
long prayers and who wore broad phylacteries — the canters of those days 
— when they fell into dialogue with the Saviour, and put forth their dispen- 
sation as this man now puts forth his. I read from viii. John, 39th verse: 

They answered and said unto Him, Abraham is our father — 

They belonged to the Abrahamic school of which the piisoner has said 
so much — 

Jesus said unto them, if ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of 
Abraham. 

Abraham did not go to the grave with his hands reddened in the blood 
of murder. Again, at verse 43: 

Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word— 

But this disciple of the Abrahamic school claimed that he did. Let us 
see how they were dealt with — 

Ye are of your father t7ie devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a 
murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in 
him. When hespeaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own. for lie is a liar, and the father 
of it. 

( Argument suspended.) 

The Court. We will adjourn the Court until to-morrow morning. 

Thereupon (at 1 o'clock and five minutes) the Court was adjourned until 
to-morrow morning at 10 o'clock. 



32 

Ti i bday, January 2 i. L882. 

The Court metal l" o'clock; counsel for Government and accused be- 
ing present. 

Mr. Porter, [f it please your honor — 

The Prisoner. (Interrupting.) [desire to Bay, before Judge Porter 
proceeds, thai some crank has signed my name to a letter in the papers 
this morning. I repudiate that kind of business. I also understand that 
two cranks have been arrested this morning. One or two of them have 
been laying around here since Saturday. I wish to say that I am in charge 
of this Court and its officers, and if any one attempts to do me harm, they 
will /» shot dead on tfn spot. Understand that. When 1 get outside I 
can t :ik»- care of myself. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Gentlemen of the jury : As usual the Court 
lias been opened by the prisoner, but by liis permission I am at, liberty 
bo add a few words. [ am grateful to you for the indulgence which has 
enabled me to proceed this morning. If 1 had done so yesterday, in the 
present condition of my health, my strength would have been utterly 
exhausted. But, it' able, I shall continue, ami to the end. Ii may he 
needful, for aught I know, t<< trespass still farther on your indulgence, 
;in ,l X( .i I fed that you who are engaged, as we are, in this thankless ami 
w.ary task, ) on who have endured patiently during this long period, longer 
even than the fast of forty days ill tin' wilderness, in an atmosphere 
dark ami putrid with calumny and blasphemy, will extend some indul- 
gence to those who speak in behalf of the Government and the law. 

I endeavored yesterday to show yon thai this defense was one founded 
on Bham, pretense, and imposture; on brazen falsehood; which was sup- 
posed to acquire force and strength bj perpetual reiteration. The dis- 
ciples of the school of Guiteau have greal confidence in a maxim of 
Aaron Buit, which, with a slight deviation from its original form, would 
apply with singular pertinence to this defense: "Truth is that which is 
nttered with effrontery, enforced by persistency, and embedded by reitera- 
tion." There are set phrases <»f the counsel which have run-' like hell 
peals through the whole trial, sometimes discordant with each other ami 
with the mock inspirations of (iuiteau; hut whether with each other, 
Or with the hlatant and turhiilent utterances of the prisoner, all clashing 
with the honesl truth of the case; the truth which you are to assert 
and declare. 

I endeavored to show you, that Guiteau had falsified by his persistent 
act- his mock and empty professions; that he had belied by his life the 

character claimed for 1dm by the opening counsel; that this prayerful, 
moral and Christian man, as lie was fancifully pictured to you, was, in 
fact, a liar, a -windier, and a murderer at heart, from the beginning — 



33 

not acting by special Divine appointment — for it so happens, that under our 
dispensation depravity does not develop itself, in a legal sense, until 
one has reached the age, when he is presumed to know the distinction be- 
tween right and wrong — that he has grown worse every year that he has 
lived, since he attained that age; that he was a vicious and a disobedient 
child; that he was lawless and ungrateful to his father; that he was an un- 
filial brother; that he stung every man who was his benefactor, from his 
youth up; that he had an intense desire for public notoriety, and that this 
manifested itself, even as early as when he was seventeen years of age; 
that his vanity was inordinate, and that his spirit of selfishness, jealousy, 
and hate overleaped all bounds and restraints. All these things we know 
of him, even in his early life. I shall call your attention to some of the evi- 
dences of these substantially undisputed facts; showing that he continued 
growing worse and worse, until his career culminated in a cold-blooded 
and cruel assassination. It was consistent and harmonious with the vi- 
cious propensities he had betrayed from the beginning. There is a self pro- 
pagating property in sin, and vice, and crime, by which it is constantly 
swelling and enlarging itself, until it thoroughly intones the whole nature 
of the man, and shapes him — not by birth as Dr. Spitzka would have 
you believe, but by assiduous culture — into " a moral montrosity." Gentle- 
men, the same man who, through his counsel, in effect and substance, 
asked you, his counsel being unsworn, and knowing that you were sworn, 
to overlook the obligations of your oaths — that same man presumed 
to arraign the counsel for the government as conspirators, coolly con- 
federating against this innocent Christian agent of God, to hang hini for a 
confessed homicide. And what was the grave imputation, aside from 
that which I referred to yesterday, of our being bought by somebody — 
he did not say whom, and for specific sums — which the leading counsel 
averred and changed from time to time to suit the varying exigencies of the 
cause; aside from the charge that we, who had never received a penny our- 
selves, and were not bound or authorized to pledge the faith of the govern- 
ment to others under any circumstances, had suborned witnesses to perjury. 
Aside from this, I wish to call your attention now to another ground of 
accusation, which is resorted to, not needlessly, for they needed all that 
has been done for the prisoner and more, but which, it is evident, they 
thought needful, to induce in you a belief that the government had deliber- 
ately suppressed evidence which we were bound to offer, and which for- 
sooth the two Guiteaus expected from us as matter of right in their behalf. 
Gentlemen, what is the nature of the evidence which is said to have been 
suppressed? The prisoner's counsel claim, that we were bound to estab- 
lish his sham defense, and to do it by his unsworn declarations in his own 
behalf. This is the effect and substance of their argument. In other words, 
we were bound to set up in his behalf a false defense, andto aid it by prov- 
ing any and all unsworn declarations of the prisoner. It seems that the 



government, in the exercise of the power, which is uniformly acted on by 
every State and ev< rj national government, for the purpose of detecting and 
bringing to justice all implicated in a public crime, Bent those to the cell of 
the prisoner, who were charged with the public duty of ascertaining and 
reporting the facts, nol to the court, bul to the government, for the purpose 

of < trolling and determining its action. The effeel of the report which 

was made, of this man's statements of the history of his life, and the cir- 
cumstances connected with the homicide, is shown by the practical result. 
The government ordered his prosecution for the crime. That government 
consists of ih"-'', whom he now coolly and impudently claims as his pre- 
tended ben< ficiaries. The who],, office of the statement which he made to 
Mr. Bailey, the stenographer of the [Jnited States attorney, so far as the 
government was concerned, was to ascertain whether he had any accom- 
plices in the crime. It was taken as it fell from the lips of the culprit, to 
the end that the government Bhould know whether there was any excuse 
or palliation for the homicide, and whether any others than the immediate 
actor were involved in its perpetration. 

The Prisoner. Mr. MacVeagh would not prosecute after he gol Brook's 

report. 

Mr. Porter. \.b Mr. Attorney-General MacVeagh was the government 
officer who communicated to me, nol only his own direction for the prose- 
cution, bul the concurring authority of the Presidenl and the Cabinet, I 
leave il for von to say, whether you credit the impudent assertion of the 
prisoner, thai any one connected with the government has, at any time, been 
ready to dip his hands in the President's blood or to shelter his assassin. The 
counsel for the prosecution have been at all times subjeel to the orderof the 
government. It' I were to receive to-day from the Executive, or from Attor- 
ney ' reneral Brewster, a direction to suspend this prosecution, my argument 
would close the instant the communication reached my hand. I should be 
from thai moment, as mute a^ the dead President. These shams and 
impostures will nol serve the prisoner's purpose. He mighl as well attempt 
to i scape from the jaws of a closing \ ise, as from the overwhelming force of 
the testimony by such railing accusations. Mr. Scoville is a gentle- 
man of sufficient intelligence to know, that the record made for the infor- 
mation of the governmenl did nol belong to him, and could qoI be called 
for by him, thai il was nol at his disposal, any more than what passed in 
the private consultations between the United States attorney and his clerk, 
an v more than the confidential communications between counsel ami client, 
any more than private and personal communication- between physician and 

patient: yet you, day after Way, have been told that the governmenl was 

suppressing testimony, which had been furnished by the statements of 
(iuiteau, in hi- own behalf, to a stenographer. 
'I' he declarations of t hi- man, a- he claims, were intended by him to appear 



35 

in the New York Herald. No matter for whom they were dictated; they were 
nothing but his unsworn declarations/ and nobody, except the Government, 
could introduce them, for the purpose of proving the facts he alleged. On 
the side issue of insanity, his honor very properly permitted him to prove, 
as far as he could, his own declarations, no matter whether true or false, 
for the purpose of showing, not the truth of the alleged facts, but the then 
state of his mind. But he could not demand from the counsel for the Gov- 
ernment, the production of his unsworn statements, which, if we had 
offered them, would have made them evidence. You have been told in sub- 
stance by Mr. Scoville, again and again, that the prisoner's statement, 
made and extended through the entire months of July and August, did 
allege that the killing was by the command of God. If we had introduced 
that statement of the prisoner, we should have made it evidence of every 
fact contained in it. Gentlemen, bear in mind, on this point, that I cannot 
speak, except in contradiction of the allegations of the prisoner and his 
counsel. I, who know what the paper is, deny that it contains any allega- 
tion of inspiration. 

Mr. Scoville. I object now, if the Court please. I hope I am in time 
to'make my exception. 

The Court. Yes ; that is objectionable. 

Mr. Pobteb. Is it objectionable to deny the unproved allegation of the 
prisoner '? 

The Court. I think so. 

Mr. Porter. No, sir ; what he asserted was, that it contains the state- 
ment that it was commanded by God. Your honor does not know ; the 
jury does not know. I oppose my statement to his, and deny it. 

The Court. I do not think you ought to state anything that is either 
contained, or not contained in that statement. 

Mr. Porter. Then I am comjjelled to submit. 

The Court. Your first argument is very correct ; that you could not put 
that in evidence without putting in evidence the whole ; that it might 
contain a great many facts. 

Mr. Porter. No, sir ; but the point is here : You permit not only the 
prisoner, but his counsel, to aver that a paper not in * rid, nee contains a 
a statement that the killing was by the command of God. That I deny. 

The Court. No ; I permitted his counsel simply to argue from its non- 
production, that the jury might infer it contained something prejudicial to 
the prosecution. But unless you take the stand as a witness I do not think 
you are at liberty to state what the paper contains or omits. 

Mr. Porter. (To the jury.) On the contrary, gentlemen, and I have 
practiced law longer than his honor, I beg to say, that where there is an un- 
founded assertion 



36 

.Mr. S( iovtlle. I insisl upon stopping thai gentleman making deolara- 
i ions in defense. 

Mr. Porter. Where a false assertion, unwarranted by the evidence, is 
made by either prisoner or counsel, we may contradicl it. 

The Coi 1:1. I cannot allow anything to be said about the contents oi 
thai paper. 

Mr. Pom i:k. 1 have ool stated anything about the contents, bul I have 
denied what ie affirmed asa fact by the prisoner, without proof. 

TheCouRT. Bui it' you deny tli.it it contains certain things, I do not 
think that is proper. 

Mr. Poster. I say that it does not contain, what they allege, without 
proof, it does contain. 

The Court. I do not think you are al liberty to do that. 

Mr. Porter. As the government cannot excepl to your honor's ruling, 
I must submit ; but [ do not admil thai the prisoner or his counsel can 
make a statemenl of Tact unwarranted by the evidence, which I cannot 
conl radid . 

The Court. The prisoner was on the stand as a witness. 

Mr. Portee. //< was in ili> dock, and nol on the stand. It was no part 
of his testimony. It was from there (indicating the dock). 

The Couet. Of course that cannot go in. 

Mr. Porter. Mr. Scoville was not a witness ; has nol been sworn, and I 
shall presently •■nine to the question, why not ? But that would be antici- 
pating. 

Again, gentlemen, we are criticised as government conspirators — and 
one of the counts of the indictment is, thai we put in too much evidence. 
We had no right, it is said, to call witness after witness to prove the 
circumstances attending the death of the President. We should ha\ e t tied 
this cause in a day, ora week on our side, and left the prisoner full swing 
for the rest of the two months and a half : that we were nol al liberty to 
call all the witnesses for il was enough that we proved by <m< the fact that 
( ruiteau fired at t he President. 

Gentlemen, I think you will see that in the • ourse of the argument, it 
has been made very evident, that we called only the right \\ itnesses, and to 
the right points. Bui they tell you an indecent and outrageous thing un- 
done. We brought into the court the flattened bullet that quenched the 
President's life. 

The Prisoner. ( fnterjecting. ) The doctors did that. 

Mi-. Poetee. So the prisoner says; and so lie said at the beginning of the 
trial. It was claimed thai this was not a murderous weapon, murderously 
aimed. Yet t he I ii diet was driven home with such a crushing force, thai you 
could not get either end of the ball, after it passed through the President's 
Bpine, to enter again the cartridge that had contained it. When it was 



37 

driven into a shapeless form, by the act of the murderer and the resistance 
of the backbone of the murdered man, the production of the penetrated 
vertebra was, forsooth, an indecent thing in a court of justice. 

You know, of course, what a howling clamor would have been raised, by 
the prisoner and his counsel, if, after a post-mortem examination, we had 
fn'th il to product it. We were just as much bound to do it, in the case of 
the President, as of an ordinary citizen. We are told, that in a case, where 
an diral malpractice was out of tin issues in flu cause, asserted constantly 
from the prisoner's box, it was discreditable that we should not leave the 
wound to description from memory, and that the path of the ball through 
the spine should not be traced by its own indelible marks, in order to falsify 
the prisoners^ pretense that the doctors killed the President. It became 
necessary in the course of the post-mortem examination to detach that por- 
tion of the spine. It was, as it should be, preserved to be used upon the 
trial, so that the truth of the case should not be left to rest, on the uncer- 
tain, and, perhaps, conflicting memory of witnesses. The prisoner seems to 
have had a delicate and sacred regard for the particular portion of the Presi- 
dent's backbone, through which the ball passed. He seems to have had less 
regard for it, when he drove that bullet through it. His grief, and that of his 
counsel, seems to be, that the shot left its track, so that the jury could see 
the direction of the ball, and the power of the chosen weapon of death, 
and the falsity of the pretense that the doctors killed him. This was a 
phase of the defense we were bound to anticipate, and we did precisely 
what would have been done in a like case in any court in Christendom. 

Yet this is charged as grave evidence of a government conspiracy against 
this innocent assassin. 

Again, we have a daring and insolent attempt, after the learned judge, 
in pursuance of his duty, had settled and declared the law — an attempt 
made alike by the prisoner and his counsel — to question the authority of his 
rulings. It is our duty on that subject, to maintain the binding force of 
those rulings, and the clear authority of the Court to instruct the jury as 
to the law. 

For the evident purpose of leading you to disregard the instructions al- 
ready given to the jury, you are told by the prisoner's counsel that you are 
"kings and emperors; " that you are responsible to no one for your action; 
that you are at liberty to act on your own individual views, not only upon 
what is proved, but upon what is not proved ; that you may assume the 
existence of facts in conflict with the evidence adduced, and base 
your verdict on possibilities and conjecture, unrestrained by legal 
rules. Gentlemen, it is the absolute province of the Court to declare 
the law. You are bound to render a verdict according to the evi- 
dence, and that upon the issues submitted to you by the Judge. You are to 
receive the law, not from the counsel, not from the prisoner, but from the 
Court. When, after the law has been definitely settled by the presiding 



38 

judge, the defendant and his counsel take occasion to argue that the Court 
is wrong, and to demand that he should modify his charge, it is appro- 
priate for me to refer for a single moment, to two decisions which contra- 
dict the assertions, on which tbeir allegation is predicated ; not as au- 
thority, for I deny that any authority is Deeded to settle the clear pro- 
position, that the instructions the Judge has given to you are, for the 
purposes of this case, unquestioned law; but for the simple reason, that 
a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of one of the leading States in 
the Union, has been insolently and summarily arraigned before you, as a 
party to an unworthy attempt to hang " thisinnocent lunatic"; and I there- 
fore, without saying one word more in regard to it, call your honor's at- 
tention, if there should be occasion for you to advert to that censure upon 
a fellow-judge, to the fact, that so far from that Judge having declared the 
law, on this question of the responsibility of the insane, in violation of all 
previous law, your honor will feel at liberty to say that it was in accord- 
ance, with the reported decisions of five judges and ex-judges of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, and with the only reported decisions 
in the Federal tribunals, including what I regard as the concurring decision 
of the Supreme Court of the United States, in 98 United State Reports. 
In that connection, I invite your honor's attention to the case reported in 
the Washington Law Reporter, issued on the 18th of the present month, 
and which only reached us five days ago — concurrently with the counsel 
making his strangely unwarranted assertions, and the prisoner making his 
insolent allegations in regard to Chief Justice Davis — in the case of the 
Stale against Martin, in which Judge Depue charged the jury, in a case 
presented for judgment before this trial commenced, a New Jersey case, 
tried in the month of October last, in the very State in which General 
Garfield ceased to breathe, and where the prisoner says he would wish to 
have been tried — in which that learned Judge declares the law, in precise 
accordance with Mr. Davidge's unaltered requests, and in which he, in 
harmony with the views of the judges to whose decisions we referred on 
the argument, though not wholly with your honor's view, as I understand it, 
that the prisoner must overcome the legal presumption of sanity by a clear 
preponderance of proof. In that respect he went further than your honor, 
and further than Judge Davis ; and I submit that it is not to be assumed 
by the jury, that one of the so-called wrongs of the prosecution is, that we 
cited a nisiprius decision by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of 
New York, as against the nisi prius citations of the prisoner. 

Mr. Reed. If the Court please, I desire to make a suggestion. Judge 
Porter, if you are to discuss questions of law over again, it is but fair to 
Submit the authorities to us. I want to say now here that I repudiate and 
deny the statement of the gentleman that I have in any manner and at any 
time or in any place questioned the law 

Mr. Porter. (Interrupting.) Did I say that you had? 



39 

Mr. Reed. (Continuing.) As laid down by the Court. Now if there is 
to be new law introduced, and new discussion, Ave want the authorities, 
and we will answer them. 

The Court. Very well. 

Mr. Porter. It is only to be introduced on the other side, according 
to the theory of the gentlemen. I do not admit it to be within your honor's 
discretion, even on the appeal of counsel, to reverse your already announced 
decision. It is conclusive upon us, although it is not in full accordance 
with our views. Your honor, I know, understands why I say this. Mr. 
Reed is, in one sense, as the witness Amerling is, counsel for the defendant. 
But the leading counsel for the defendant sits behind him, in conjunction 
with the prisoner in the dock. They are the two responsible counsel for 
the defense. 

In regard to the other decision, which has been repeatedly brought to 
the attention of your honor, although uniformly stated incorrectly ; it 
happens that the case in the Court of Appeals, which is said to have adopted 
the new view of the law, according to the dispensation of Guiteau, and to 
be a great advance upon the antecedent law, which actually called on the 
prisoner to rise and thank the judges of the Court of Appeals in New York 
for coming over to his side 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Exactly what they did. 

Mr. Pouter. (Continuing.) I will hand their decision to your honor, if 
you should have occasion to refer to it in your charge. In the view I 
take of it, however, you will have no occasion to refer to it, because 
you will declare, not what their opinion of the law is, but what your own 
is. Still, as it happens that this decision comes from my own State, and 
from its highest tribunal, and is in precise accord with what I stated to 
your honor in the argument, to be the law of New York, and in precise 
accordance with which your honor framed your instructions in respect to 
the question of the onus probandi, and the effect of a reasonable doubt, I 
desire merely to call your attention to the decision; because the subject is 
not generally understood, and, as commonly conceded, the majority of the 
State Courts and the Federal tribunals have held otherwise. But your 
honor adopted, what I believe to be the true and sound rule of law. As 
counsel for the government, I was bound, as a matter of course, to present 
the authorities on both sides, which I did, and I stated this to your honor 
as the rule prevailing in my own State ; and it was for you to determine, 
whether you would follow the Federal tribunals and the rulings of the 
majority of the States, in accordance with Mr. Davidge's proposition, or 
Avhat I confess, with my antecedent views, seemed to me to be the right 
rule upon principle. But lest I should be misunderstood, as the prisoner 
took occasion to tell the jury from the box 



40 

Mr. Scoville. [nterrupting. Now, if the Court please, I object to 
Judge Porter's reading this law. If the discussion is to go on before 
\ our honor upon legal questions, le1 us have his authorities and let us have 
an opportunitj to answer them. I am perfectly willing he should hand it 
to the Court or anything of that kind. But if he is going to make a legal 
argument here, and cite decisions as to what the law is we want to know 
SO as t<> answer it . 

Mr. Porter. I will hand the decision to your honor. That will 
answer my purpose. (Submitting pamphlet to the Court./ 

Gentlemen, this case — which the prisoner would have you believe, de- 
cided that if lie knew right from wrong, it did not follow at all that he was 
guilty of murder, hut, on the contrary, that he was not ; for that is the 
substance of his proposition, as you will remember — lays down the rule of 
responsibility in accordance -with the proposition of Mr. Davidge, and 
while I do not personally agree to the qualification which his honor bas 
made, hut from his standpoint very properly, for the purpose of exclud- 
ing a possible misapprehension in reference to future cases, and to cases 
arising on a different state of facts — yet the rule announced to you by the 
Court was so well understood to be the law, that in the New York case, it 
was not even made the ground of exception by counsel, though the charge 
of the judge at nisi pr ius was stated in the report of the case. The 
prisoner's counsel, however, did object that the Judge refused to charge, 
that if there was a reasonable doubt of the prisoner's sanity they must 
acquit. 

That question came clearly before the Court of Appeals of New York, 
and although my printt d report may be less authoritative than the oral 
statement of the prisoner, the Judge after reading, what, at the request 
of the defendant's counsel, I have submitted to him, will be able to in- 
struct you, if there is occasion for it, that those ill-advised judges unani- 
mously held, thai the question of reasonable doubt on insanity did not 
arise, and that the request to charge the jury " that if there was a reason- 
able doubt of his insanity" was denied and properly denied, and that the 
only rule to prevail in such a case was precisely that which your honor has 
already delivered from the bench ; that is to say : the burden of proof is 
upon the prisoner to establish his insanity, and. that he is not entitled to 
a charge that upon a reasonable doubt on that subject the jury should 
acquit; but that if, upon the whole evidence, the jury have a reasonable 
doubt of the prisoner's .guilt then he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) You and the Court of Appeals do not 
agree. 

Mr. Porter. The judge will determine that matter, if there is occasion 
to determine it at all. 

But, gentlemen, I wish you now to bear in mind, that though from causes 



41 

which neither we nor the Court could control, and from successive inci- 
dents and utterances from the criminal dock, we singularly enough have 
at times had this court room converted, at the will and choice of the 
mocking assassin of Garfield, into what has popularly heen known as 
the arena of a circus clown and murderer. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is false. 

Mr. Porter. I know the difficulty the learned Judge has had ami 
felt from the beginning. The public, who have censured or assumed to 
censure him, did not know, as he did, and as you did, the practical difficul- 
ties of the situation. We have all felt that it was important that this 
should be a final trial ; that there should be no shadow of doubt, that the 
prisoner had every conceivable right, and when he ascertained that this 
was our purpose, //' proa < di d to exercise other* which were not his. 
I was upon the proposition, gentlemen, that this defense, as well on the 
part of the prisoner as his counsel, has been a disingenous and sham de- 
ft use. You would naturally have supposed, that when you laid your hands 
upon the book of God, and pledged yourselves to try faithfully this issue 
between the United States and the man whom the grand jury presented to 
you as the murderer and assassin of President Garfield, the inquiry by 
you was simply, " Is this man guilty ?" How has that inquiry ramified 
since? You are not a jury of inquisition to find out who killed Garfield. 
Human memory would scarcely recall the various and protean forms to 
which this inquiry has been shaped. There has been a persistant attempt 
to make you think you are really here as a jury of inquisition to find out 
who killed Garfield, and before you were even sworn as jurors the issue, 
there has been a constant effort to shift the issue. You are asked who 
killed President Garfield. That he is dead most men frankly admit. Who 
killed him ? 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) The doctors. 

Mr. Porter. " The doctors," responds the prisoner. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is what most people think about it. 

Mr. Porter. Has or has not the defense that the doctors killed him 
been abandoned ? 

The Prisoner. The Lord allowed the doctors to confirm my act. They 
were the immediate cause of his death. 

Mr. Porter. I am afraid the prisoner has not had- the latest intelligence 
from heaven, for he admits inspiration came and went an hour before 
and after he murdered the President. 

A gentleman was assigned, on the application of the prisoner, to assist 
him in the defense of this case, and assigned too by the Court. It was in 
the assertion of a judicial power, which was properly exercised. The gen- 



42 

tleraan selected, Mr. Leigh Robinson, was one of the ablest lawyers either 
in this District or elsewhere. He was an accomplished jurist; he was an hon- 
orable man; he was a lawyer in the highesl sense of the term, and as Wood 
sometimes, though not always, tells, he had the prestige in both branches 
of his family, of names illustrious in the annals both of American states- 
manship and of the American bar. He appeared in the case ; he dis- 
charged his duties faithfully ; he acted in accordance with his convictions ; 
he fully justified and vindicated the selection made by his honor, 
tor he was a thorough and intoned gentleman; he was a man of honor; 
he was a lawyer who could descend to nothing unworthy of him; and having 
served faithfully up to a point in the trial, beyond which the prisoner 
would permit him to serve no longer, driven by ignominous insolence and 
abuse, and unmerited insult so far as this prisoner could offer personal 
indignity to a high-toned gentleman, and with still greater ignominy, so far 
as the senior counsel associated with him could offer it 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is false. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Driven to ask his honor to relieve him- 

from a position which it had become impossible for him, as an upright law- 
yer and an honorable gentleman to retain, your honor properly relieved 
him. 

Let us ask now, who killed (l<irfi<lil '? The prisoner tells you, with his 
characteristic impudence and effrontery, that the responsibility is upon 
Secretary Blaine. Guiteau was not, but Blaine was, the murderer. Why 
I was led to think, from the prisoner's evidence, perhaps inadvertently, 
that the responsibility was on the Deity, who is beyond your jurisdiction. 
But the prisoner, who denied that he was the assassin, at page 692 of the 
evidence, puts forth the absurd and impudent pretense, that Secretary 
Blaine is responsible for the murder of President Garfield. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Morally responsible. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Secretary Blaine, for whom, brilliant and 
eminent as he is. I have no more reason for particular regard than, so far 
as I know, he has for me, by his mere presence beside the President, un- 
conscious that both were dogged by a midnight murderer, saved the 
life of General Garfield, on the night before the assassination was con- 
summated. Mr. Secretary Blaine was with him at l lie time he was assas- 
sinated, and though he could not see the man behind, who dogged them 
both, took the chance involuntarily, and without a thought of personal 
danger to himself, of a ball missing, which might have then ent 
his hack by pure mischance, instead of the back of President Garfield. 

Again. At pages 1866-68, l he responsibility was upon Prt sid\ nt Garfii Id 
himself, says the prisoner. He was the assassin. 

If he had not, on the theory of the assassin, betrayed the men who 



43 . . 

elected him, counting Guiteau, who did not even vote for him, as one of 
them, he would not have died. The President, was responsible foi\ his 
own death. " He betrayed the Republican party, and for this he dies.'''' 

We have the extraordinary statement, that Mrs. Garfield, the widow, 
whom so far as appears Mr. Reed never saw, has made him her private 
spokesman, to tell you that, while your deliberations are going on, she is 
absolutely kneeling in prayer, that you should find a verdict in favor of 
this poor, miserable, murdering lunatic. And he expects sworn jurors to 
accept his puerile and fanciful statement. There is a sense in which the 
prisoner makes Mrs. Garfield responsible for her husband's death. He 
swears, that when that honored lady, loved, as he impudently pretends, 
by him, leaned pale and feeble upon President Garfield's arm, for support, 
her presence did, for one day, nay more, for fourteen days, absolutely save 
his life. And, in that sense, she is responsible; for you will remember the 
significance of his answer, when I was cross-examining him and put this 
question : " If, on the second of July, while you held that bull-dog pistol 
in your hand, Mrs. Garfield had been by his side, would you have shot 
him?" " I would not." This is the man who says he had no choice. 
This is the man who tells you that the power of the Deity was grinding, 
grinding, grinding with divine pressure, and that he would have committed 
this act of heartless and deliberate murder, though he had known that he 
would have been hanged by the mob for the crime, and would have per- 
ished the next minute. This lets you into the inside of the man. He 
would not in that case have killed him, simply because he dared not. And 
so Mrs. Garfield is made responsible for the death of her husband, by not 
being at his side on the second of July. Yet Mr. Reed would have you 
believe that the President's widow is praying for the man who shot him. 

Gentlemen, they would have you also believe, that your moral nature 
should have been left outside when you came into the court room, and 
that you are bound to sit here as mere intellectual machines. Not so with 
the law. The judges are, really, in a certain sense to be intellectual 
machines. It is because they are so, at least in theory, that from a long 
time anterior to that Magna Charta, in which the learned gentleman sup- 
poses the trial by jury originated, from a time when our Anglo-Saxon 
ancestors sold their own white children as slaves, even from that time, the 
jury of the vicinage were always called in a case of murder, not only in 
England and its dependencies, but even in the forests of Germany and in 
the wilds of Scandanavia. The right of trial by jury existed, long before 
the charters granted by English kings. It originated when men felt, as 
you and I feel to-day, that a jury should be called, and a jury of the 
vicinage, and that they should bring with them their knowledge of men, 
and their abhorrence of crime, and that they should not leave their moral 
nature and their consciences outside when they enter the jury box. 

You are asked to accept the statement of counsel, not attested, however, 



44 

while he was on the witness Btand, thai Mrs. Garfield, while you are 
deliberating, us kneeling :ui<l praying thai her husband's blood, which 
cries from the ground for justice, -hall appeal to you in vain. 

Gentlemen of the jury, what is the nature of the scenes which counsel 
has conjured up? I trusl you appreciate the charity, winch this praying 
Christian, through his counsel, now enjoins ; the charity which would in 
other times have broughl the victim's aged mother before you, and, in a 
room draped in black, as it would have In ■en. if i hi> cause had been tried, 
.1- it well mighl have been, in other times and other lands, the week follow- 
ing the murder; picture to yourselves thai mother coming in this court room, 
according to the old custom of the English, to witness the trial in presence 
of the corpse, mutilated by the murderer, swathed in white linen, through 
which it was supposed of old, that the mere approach of the homicide would 
quicken the blood again to life, ami mark him as the assassin : imagine 
General Garfield lying then — nol merely one of the vertebrae of his back- 
bone — hut the whole man cold in death, and the death-sweal still lingering on 
his brow, with the expression of worn and weary agonywhich thi- prisoner 
had placed there, with the cowering actor in the drama shrinking from 
approach to the body— as in the old process of bier righl — lesl the hlood 
in the winding sheel should indicate him as the assassin; ami suppose 
that aged mother, who had looked t<> this son t<> close her eyes in death, 
bowed with grief at the coffin-head, with the widow, whose lips were, the 
lasl thai ever touched the cold lips of the dead President, sitting at Ins 
feet in du-t ami ashes. Suppose, in such a scene, the sympathetic counsel 

had stood tip and announced to you, that the w en who seemed 1m you 

kneeling only to God in sorrow, were really kneeling to Him to pray that 
the murderer mighl be delivered from justice ! 

Gentlemen, it is well for us all, that the law does not call on jurors To 
leave the only i in mortal part of their nature, their moral nature, a1 the court 
house door when they enter it to administer justice. 

Well, Mrs. Garfield is responsible for this murder. Bui who el-,' is 
responsible? As the prisoner would have you believe, John II. N~oyes. lie 
killed Presidenl Garfield. That John II. Noyes, from whom the prisoner 

stole t he ideas put forth in his lectures on the second advent and the 

apostle Paul ; and on thai "hell," which was prominenl in the firsl edition 
of his book, but which he changed to the milder form of " perdition " in 

the manuscript alterations — made a- part of his pre pa rat ions for the murder 
of the President. 

Who else killed Garfield? Th< prisoner's father that fatherwhom he 
struck from behind, when he was eighteen years of age — thai fatherwhom 

he says he can never forgive — the father with whom he says, he was not 

on speaking terms for the last fifteen years of that honored life. 

Who else is responsible? Who else killed Garfield? Why, tfu mother 
of the prisoner, whom he scarcely remembered, who was guilty of the 



45 

mordinate atrocity of having a temporary attack of erysipelas, so severe 
that it required the cutting off of her hair, and who was in such infirm 
health, as to become the mother of three children in succession after him; 
but left to him an inheritance of " congenital monstrosity." She killed 
Garfield. 

"Who else? Uncle Abraham, the drunken and dissolute, but never 
insane, uncle. Though not insane himself, this uncle transmitted insanity 
to the prisoner. He was not his father nor his mother, nor his grandfather 
nor his grandmother; and though he did not become dissolute and drunken 
until after the prisoner was born, Uncle Abraham killed Garfield by 
making the prisoner insane. 

Francis Guiteau, another uncle, being disappointed in love, fought a 
duel with his rival, in respect to which there are two versions by tradition, 
one that he killed the husband of the woman he loved, in vengeance for 
his own disappointment, and the other that he fought a sham duel, which 
exposed him to such ridicule and derision that it drove him long after into 
an insane asylum. He killed Garfield, by making this man the " congenital 
monstrosity," whom Dr. Spitka describes. 

Then again. Cousin ^\l>!>>/ Maynard, a bright, beautiful, brilliant girl, 
according to the account of all with whom she came in contact for years 
and years, but who unfortunately was taken possession of by one of the 
Guiteau order — a travelling mesmeriser — who by his experiments, robbed 
her of all that was attractive and engaging, and left her a wreck, so that 
afterwards a street boy, who is sought out somewhere, followed her And 
called her foolish Abby ; but at last she was charitably taken by Mrs. 
Wilson to an asylum, where they receive those who are infirm of mind, as 
well as those who are insane. She, too, was responsible for the prisoner's 
becoming a " congenital monstrosity. " 

Who else committed this murder? Why, gentlemen, the Chicago Con- 
vention, by the nomination of President Garfield and Vice-President Ar- 
thur — they killed Garfield. They, too, were " inspired." His nomination 
was " an act of God." But if they had not selected him, the prisoner would 
not have killed him, and they are responsible. 

Who else? The electors of the Unite! States, Republican and Demo- 
cratic — they killed Garfield. If they had not chosen him, the necessity 
would not have arisen. If they had not elected General Garfield, the idea 
is, that Guiteau would have got either the Austrian mission or the Paris 
consulship, and there would have been no occasion for the murder of Pres- 
ident Garfield. He would not have been President. That too was " an act 
of God;" and inasmuch as God had, by two acts, made it necessary for 
him to kill General Garfield, he comes to the very natural conclusion, 
that when he determined to murder him, the Deity undertook to take the 
back track, and to correct his past errors, in inspiring the Chicago conven- 
tion and the electors of the country into [the nomination and election of 



4.; 

Garfield, and appointed him, him -him, with liis swindling record; him, a 
broken-down lawyer; him, the man who foughl his father, who lifted an 
axe at his Bister, and struck his brother and benefactor; him, a sufferer by 
syphilis — him to correct the errors of Deity, by murdering the President, 
who bad been elected by "an acl oJ < i <>< I !" 

Tln'M' are the sham defenses put forward by this praying prisoner and 
his counsel, in order to divert your attention from the fact thai the man 
\vh<> killed Presidenl Garfield sits there (pointing to the dock), and though 

Garfield is dead and mute, the pris >r speaks, and has spoken <»n the 

witness stand, those words which prove him t<> be a premeditated murderer 
— the deliberate, sane, and responsible assassin of the President. 

Bui even these pretenses are qoI enough. The press — the press killed 
Garfield; and the press is summarily arraigned by the murderer and his 
counsel. It is indicted without the formality of a grand jury, accused l>y 
the oath of the homicide, and found guilty by the murderer. But unfor- 
tunately he no longer holds the bull-dog pistol in his hand, and the press 
e.in only lie convicted of the murder of General Garfield by the blistered 
tongue of the false accuser. Is it really true, gentlemen, that we are not 
at liberty, through a free press, to declare our opinions as American free- 
men, on the policy of those who control the government? Is it true that 
when, in the heat of political controversy, we say hard things of eacli 
other when in the eameStneS8 and zeal of political contention, we 
array ourselves, one on one side and another on another, we are hoisting 
the black flag, and giving leave to murderers to kill those in whose policy 
we do not happen to concur V I> every member of a party or subdivision 
of a party, at liberty to advance its interests by shedding blood ? That is, 
in this regard, the theory of the defense. Then comes, I am ashamed to 
Bay it, not from the prisoner, but from the senior counsel — his client hav- 
ing butchered Garfield as he would have slaughtered a calf that he desired 
to eat — a charge that three of our most eminent citizens are responsible 
for the act of this homicide. There are those, who are placed in too lofty 
a position, to be permitted to defend themselves against even the vipers 
that hiss at them. They would degrade their own dignity by noticing, or 
permitting any one else to notice, such a charge, with their concurrence. 
There is a distinguished American Senator, who would at this moment, were 

it not that he Was already in too proud a position tO justify his acceptance 

of the office, be sitting as Chief Justice of the Tinted States the son of a 

great and honored Federal jurist — a man, who though still young in years, 

commanded more of the attention at home and abroad of the admirers 

of intellectual greatness, and of the highesl order of eloquence and states- 
manship, than almost any other man perhaps even of our time; an earnest, 
sincere and intense partisan; a man honest ill all his utterances and all his 
acts. It has mil been my fortune to have much intercourse with him in 
life; my time being engrossed in the duties of my profession, while he lias 



47 

"been engaged in the more important and responsible duties of public life — 
a man faithful to his friends, and equally faithful to his convictions, even 
though fidelity involved sacrifice. He was capable of doing, what few 
men are, resigning the leadership in the Senate of the United States, 
second to no other parliamentary body in all Christendom, and to do 
it at the peril of his own political overthrow — a man not only of unstained 
integrity and honor, but of courage, fearlessness, and manliness, which 
made his withdrawal from the Senate a matter of regret even to his po- 
litical adversaries — such a man is arraigned in his absence before an Amer- 
ican jury, and arraigned not by the criminal, but by the criminal's de- 
fender, as responsible for the murder of President Garfield. 

The Prisoner. Without my consent. 

Mr. Porter. Again there is an honored " tanner," for so the counsel in 
his bitterness called him, a tanner of Galena, a tanner who is more honored 
to-day in the Confederate States than any American commander, save 
their own cherished leader, General Lee — a man more honored in the 
Northern States than any other citizen, who was nominated as a candidate 
for office from a feeling of earnest and sincere gratitude for services in 
war and afterwards in conciliation, a man whose life has been without dis- 
honor or reproach, a man twice elevated by his countrymen to a most con- 
spicuous position, as successor to the great office held by Washington and 
Jackson and Lincoln, and who, after he left that elevated position, was 
welcomed in every European and Oriental land, as second to none of the 
illustrious characters, whose names adorn the history of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Pie is one of those arraigned by the lawyer of Guiteau 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) But not by Guiteau. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing) as responsible for the murder of Presi- 
dent Garfield. Nay, more than that; we have the present President of 
the United States 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Made so by the inspiration of Guiteau. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing) the successor of President Garfield, the 

successor of Lincoln, of Hayes, of Jackson, of Jefferson, of Adams, and 
Washington — elevated to that position, not by an assassin, but by the voice 
of his countrymen. Every vote in the United States which was cast for 
James A. Garfield was cast for Chester A. Arthur. It was cast with ref- 
erence to the contingency of President Garfield's death. Every Demo- 
crat, and there were many thousands of them, or the ticket could not 
have been elected, every Republican, who voted for Garfield, voted also 
for the present honored President of the United States; and when this 
homicide says, "I made Arthur President," he forgets that General Ar- 
thur was made President by the voice of his countrymen ; that he was 
made President by that very voice which made Garfield President, and in 
pursuance of the Constitution and the laws which provided for the contin- 
gency of death or disability, from whatever cause, of the nominee for the 



1:8 

Chii »tracy. Millard Fillmore was jusl as truly elected by the peo- 

ple, as the President whom he succeeded. 

The Constitution which was wiser, as has been said, than those who 
made it, foresaw the possibility of the death of the head <>f the nation and 
the disasters which mighl ensue, and provided for a simultaneous election 
of a successor in office. 

The prisoner, in bis speech, told you on Saturday, thai the Constitution 
foresaw thai Garfield might die any day, and from any cause, and that he 
mighl have Blipped in treading upon an orange peel, and died of the result- 
ing fall. So, too, he mighl have step] ed upon a rattlesnake, and its fangs 
might have pierced his heel. Suppose cither of these events bad hap- 
pened, would it be either the orange peel or the rattlesnake, that made 
< reneral Arthur Presidenl ? 

• The prisoner is Bhown by the evidence i<> have been all his life as slip- 
pery as the orange peel ; all his life as venomous as the rattlesnake ; but 
in oiu' respecl more dangerous, for Providence had provided in respect to 
that reptile, the earliest representative of the fiend, thai he should give 
warning at one end, of the venom of death to be infused at the other. This 

was a rattlesnake without the rattle, but not without the fangs. The pris- 
oner tells you thatA* made' General Arthur President of the United States 
He made him President, only in the same sense the snake would have done 
so, in the case supposed. 

The counsel on the other side told you, in substance, that if you found 
a verdict, which should convict this man of murder it would be very horri- 
ble; t/<<it General Garfield himself thought tin man insane^ and would he 
shocked this is the effect though not the language — at meeting him in 
that paradise, to which Guiteau's prayers and piety will undoubtedly con- 
duct him, although he seems yery averse to going then 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is a matter of opinion, sir. 

y\\. Porter. (Continuing.) — —that when President Garfield meets him 
in that paradise, he is expected by counsel to express his astonishment, 
that a jury should have found guilty, that the Court should have sen- 
tenced, and that the law should have bung his murderer. Gentlemen, I 
adopt as a part of m\ argument, whal you have all read, bul whichlwishto 
recall to your attention, because it is historical, to indicate how .Mr. Reed 
mis-tales t he views of the late President, lie makes mi assertion which 
undoubtedly he believes, lie tells you, also, that he loved Garfield. I 
never heard of the love being mutual, nor of any thine- to produce a mutu- 
ality of love ; bul as counsel, he chooses to pose before you as the friend 
of Garfield. I take it for granted that he hadtread the little hook, which 
lies on almost every book-stand of the count ry, containing raeraerable say- 
ings of Garfield during his struggle between life and death, sayings simple 
as childhood, guileless, frank, sincere, yel significant utterances, between 



4!) 

Guiteau's bullet and his own death. In one of his waking hours on the 
11th of July, the President asked Miss Susan A. Edson, where Guiteau was. 
You remember that this was when he expected to recover. He then re- 
marked, people would doubtless come to him some day, with a petition for 
the pardon of that man, and he wondered what he should do in a personal 
matter like that. Miss Edson told him she should think he would do 
nothing at all. He certainly could not pardon such a man ; and the 
President said, " No, I do not suppose I could." Yet in his name, Mr. 
Reed, to whom the American bar is indebted for the introduction to its 
ranks of the prisoner, Guiteau, undertakes to say that the President re- 
garded him as an irresponsible lunatic, and pictures his wife then, his 
widow now, as kneeling and praying, that when the jury come to pass 
upon the criminality of the murderer, they would act upon what '? 
The example of the Saviour, who had the power, which you have not, of 
forgiving crime. It is astonishing what vital piety pervades and surrounds 
the dock. Mr. Reed, quietly assuming insanity, withdrawing from you 
the question whether this man was a lunatic, and deciding that for him- 
self, gravely assures you, in substance and effect, that the Saviour of man- 
kind was not in favor of hanging lunatics, and instead of that He cured 
them ; that you, though mere mechanical machines, who have left your 
consciences and your moral nature outside the court-house, are to extend 
mercy to the homicide, on the theory that the Saviour would have done so. 
The passage which he cited — I remember its general tenor, although 
I do not recall the words — was inapt, by that singular fatality which 
has followed this man from the depot where he shed Garfield's blood, 
down to the dock where he stands to-day awaiting the verdict and sentence 
of the law. No one doubts the power of the Saviour of mankind to heal 
the sick, to forgive the sinner,- to restore the lunatic, to purge and cleanse 
and purify the impure of heart. You are not gifted with that power of 
working miracles, but the Saviour, in the very passage from which counsel 
icad, made the just distinction between the sick, the lunatic, and those 
possessed with devils. The claim in the present case is, that this man was 
so enormously wicked as to be, in the language of Dr. Spitzka, an absolute 
" moral monstrosity." He represents the distinctive class, of whom the 
Saviour spoke, not as lunatics, but as 2 )0Sse * se d with devils. But it is 
worth while to remember, what we are all familiar with, the mode in 
which He dealt, as we elsewhere learn, with those thus possessed. I 
do not at the moment recall the precise reference. It occurs in the rec- 
ord of the Evangelists ; and I think the fullest version is in Mark. 
A man was brought to him, who was possessed with devils, and prayed 
to be delivered from them, a prayer which I am afraid has never arisen 
from the pris*oner's dock, or from the prisoner before he entered it. The 
Saviour granted the prayer, and commanded the devil to announce his 
character. "My name is Legion, Legion." If you hail the power of 



50 

workings miracle, and could bring oul the demoniac Bpiril which pos- 
sesses this man, yen would all be agreed that, upon the evidence, the 
nana of the spirit was the same. The Saviour commanded— what you 
would oommand in vain- - - 1 lint the legion should come out of him. \' 
Ili- command they came out, and— for even devils go through the 
form of prayer — prayed to the Saviour thai they mighl enter into a herd 
of swine ; and He suffered them. What became of the swine after the 
legion had entered them ? They rushed down into the sea. Whether the 
devil that possesses this man, is or is qoI to be choked by the mandate of 
the law, is for you in part to determine, but the ultimate destination of the 
swine, thus possessed, was to be choked in the waters of the sea. Gentle- 
mi ii, I have said all thai I deem necessary, on these side topics. We are 
here for the purpose of ascertaining whether this man is guilty, and 
these collateral issues as to the alleged guilt "1" others I shall not discus?, 
further than is needful incidentally, in the course of the general argument 
as to his personal criminality. It is, however, a mistake to suppose thai 
vou are -as in one of these ad captandum arguments you have been told, in 
the spii it of obsequious flattery — " twelve kings and emperors." Does such 
fulsome adulation commend itself to your sense of propriety? Had it a 
motive'.-' What was it ? If I should use such language, I trust you would 
treat it with scorn. It is used, however, by the junior counsel of the 
prisoner, on whose certificate Guiteau was admitted to the bar, and who 
seems to have lieen the only man among our fifty millions, who could be 
induced to recommend him for office. 

Vou are no more kings, gentlemen, than .Messrs. Scoville and Reed are 
kings. There is an abstract sense, in which it is -aid, thai as all sovereign 
power is wielded with us by the people, every American is a sovereign. 
But here, and for the purposes of this trial, you are told that each of you 
is not merely a sovereign but an emperor. There was a purpose in it. If 
it had come from Mr. Scoville, I might not have thought it an ingenuous 
purpose. As it conies from Mr. Reed, I can only think thai they did not 
teach him his lesson well. Would he seriously lead you to suppose, that 
you can properly override the Judge and the law; that you are at liberty 
to disregard the instructions of the Court, and find your verdict, or refuse 
to lind it, on the ground of speculative doubts, not warranted by the evi- 
dence, hut based, as counsel suggests^ "//"// your <<"•// vieio <,f tfu prisoner, 
or upon evidence which has not been submitted to you, hut ha- been ' .'■- 
.■hi, I, ,i In/ //,, ( 'ourt. 

At this point, I 2 o'clock in., the ('ourt took a recess until half past 12. 

An IK Re< ESS. 

Mr. Porter. At the recess I w as calling your at tent ion to the fact, that 
Mr. Reed in the opening argument exalted you into "kings and emperors," 
seemingly in the hope of thus inveigling you into overlooking your oaths 



51 

and in disregard of the evidence given, acting upon'speculation founded on 
your own view, and on evidence not given by either side. It seemed to 
me that while this was afulsome and inappropriate suggestion to be made 
to a jury, it was one which should call your attention to the differing re- 
sponsibility of • sworn jurors and unsworn counsel. As I said before re- 
cess, either of you is a king, only in the same sense in which the pris- 
oner is a king, as he sits in his box uncrowned, except in his own con- 
ceit. He evidently supposes, that when he lias qualified himself to lift 
hands stained with illustrious blood, he has made himself illustrious ; that 
it is for him to award immortality to you, to his counsel, and the Judge. 
Indeed, he frankly intimates, that your names will be dishonored if you 
respect your oaths, and that the honored name of the Judge will be 
blasted, unless he conies to the rescue of the homicide, notwithstanding 
the sworn evidences of his guilt. 

He cautiously warns the President, and other distinguished men of the 
republic, and even the Deity, that they must take heed how they 
deal with him. He condescends, however, to assure you that he is sat- 
isfied, so far, with what the Almighty has done, but intimates his modest 
expectation that before this trial is through, if it is necessary to shield him, 
this prayer-making innocent, you or I or the Judge will be struck down 
by direct interposition from above. All this is well played. He is not 
only a mimic, but an actor, and has shown it repeatedly through the pro- 
gress of the trial. While in jail he has appeared in his real part. Here 
he has been constantly posing on the stage for your benefit, possibly 
in accordance with the suggestions of his counsel; and, by way of va- 
riety, he has occasionally indulged you with abuse of his senior counsel, 
which promoted the purpose of that counsel, and was not improbably a 
part of the programme. Gentlemen, he is neither a crowned nor an un- 
crowned king, notwithstanding his pretense of divine inspiration. He knows 
it; and though there are many here, men, women, and children of all 
races and nations, I venture to say, that though the prisoner claims to 
have been a divine agent in removing the President to paradise, and though 
he has repeatedly assured you that he was prepared to meet his God, 
there is probably not one soul in this assembly that shrinks with such 
abject cowardice from confronting the Deity to whom he appeals. 

Gentlemen, Mr. Peed is mistaken. -It would be no credit to you to be 
kings and emperors. If you had been, your will would have been your 
law; and that was the moral of Mr. Reed's argument — that, for this pur- 
pose, you were clothed with imperialirresponsibility, and could deter- 
mine, without regard to the evidence or the law, upon your own view, 
whether this man was or was not an insane homicide. Kings and em- 
perors are, to some extent, a law unto themselves. It is the boast of 
every American citizen, that he recognizes a governmental authority 
above his own, and bows, as a juror, to the law as declared by the Courts. 



52 

]Iis honor is, here, the official exponenl of the law, and for the purposes of 
the presenl trial, his ruling is binding and controlling. Kings, as we 
think, an //"/,/, by men. Jurors, according to our theory of the law, 
are mack by God, and it is in His image thai they act and speak. They 
have, and should have, human sympathies. They have the' sense of con- 
science, of 'duty, and <>f just indignation al wrong. They have, and 
should have, the intelligence to see the right, and the integrity to up- 
hold and enforce it. Believing, us I do, from the close observation of 
each man of your number, one by one, through these weary eleven 
weeks— forming the besl judgment i could of your characters — I venture 
to affirm that the prisoner is mistaken, and thatthere is no1 an unworthy 
juror in thai box, that there is no man-made king, no man-made emperor; 
thai you arc God-made men. The result will show whether this judg- 
ment is right. 

Gentlemen, after having disposed of those outlying and incidental por- 
tions of the argument of the three gentlemen, which seem to me to call 
for particular observation, T come to the real issue, which is not mie of 
general inquisition, but of direct and personal accusation. Did thisman 
murder General Garfield, and did he know what he was doing, and that in 
so doing he was violating divine and human law ? If he did, then, as I under- 
stand the law, as adjudged by this Court, he is responsible. 1 have ab- 
stracted from the original rulings, what 1 think a full and fair epitome of the 
views, of his honor. If I have failed to do so, the Court will correct me. Le- 
gal forms, gentlemen, are often entangling and confusing. Laymen, who 
are necessarily unfamiliar with them, may often be misled by technical 
phraseology, without the explanations given in the final charge to the jury. 
His honor's rulings cover many pages of this record. You are to accept 
them. The prisoner has a right of appeal from them, hut you have moo. 
The oath you have taken, hinds you just as much to receive the instructions 

of his honor, on questions of law, as if there were not another Jtudg i 

the face of the earth, and to pass on 1 bese issues as he shall submit them to 
you, in accordance with the legal rides of evidence. The firsl of those 
issues is: 

Was Charles •'. Guiteau imam on the 2d of July, 1881 ? [f he was not, 
the case is at an end ; and the deliberate homicide being undisputed, your 
-u orn duty is to convicl him. 

sond. [f he was nots&ne on thai day, was he insane to such a de> 
thai he did not know that the homicide was morally and legally wrong? 
If he was nol insane to that degree, you arc bound by your oaths under the 
law, to find him guilty. 

Third, [f, in disregard of his confessions, and the other evidence, you 
should lind, that he actually and honestly believt </ that God had commanded 
him to assassinate the President, and was thus under a delusion, unless you 
find the further fact that such delusion existed to such an •strut as to dis- 



53 

able him from knowing that the act was morally and legally wrong, you are 
bound, by your oaths, to convict him. 

Fourth. If you find that such delusion did exist, that God had so com- 
manded him, and that delusion was one resulting from urinal insanity, then 
you are at liberty to acquit him, if you find that such insane delusion ex- 
isted to such a degree that he w.-is unable to control his own will. In that 
connection, bear in mind that he has sworn to the j'aet, that he was able to- 
control his own will, and that if Mrs. Garfield had been at the side of the 
President he would have controlled it, and the President would have lived 
to see the sun set on the 2d of July, untouched by the mortal wound. 

Fifth. If you find that, even though he was partially insane, the delusion 
was one resulting from his own conception in /he beginning, his own subse- 
quent reasoning, his own contrivance and craft, and his own malignity and 
depravity, notwithstanding he thus came really to entertain such insane 
delusion as a result of his criminal and wicked purpose, still you are bound,, 
under the instructions of the Court, to hold him criminally responsible. 

Sixth. If upon the whole case you have no reasonable doubt, that whether 
he was partially insane or wholly sane, he hnew that the killing of the Presi- 
dent was legally and morally wrong, you are bound by your oaths, and un- 
der the instructions of the Court, as to the law, to hold him responsible for 
his act. 

(To the Court.) May I pass this memorandum up to your honor ? (Hand- 
ing same to Court.) Because I desire you to see 

Mr. Reed. (Interposing.) That is what you propose to ask the Court to 
instruct the jury. 

The Court. That is his construction upon what the Court has already 
said. 

Mr. Reed. Very well. 

Mb. Porter. His honor will charge you at the close of the argument up- 
on all the questions involved. I have endeavored to present fully and 
fairly the instructions of the Court as I understand them. They are not 
in the precise form in which Mr. Davidge submitted them, but they are, in 
the main, in substantial accordance with most of those which he submitted,, 
and I have endeavored, perhaps imperfectly, to express every qualification 
thai? the Judge felt it important and proper to make, in order to prevent un- 
just inferences from his charge in this or in future cases. These are the 
prominent issues. I begin with the first of them. If I have made them, 
intelligible, you will see that they are so intermingled in the evidence, that 
I can not undertake to separate it with reference to each. If, however,. 
you follow my argument, you will see that on each of these propositions 
we are furnished with evidence, from the effect of which there is m> 
escape. 

It is no*abstract question — who killed President Garfield ? It is the direct 



■M 

question whether this man killed him ; whether, if be did, he was Bane or 
insane; whether, if insane, he was bo to such a degree thai he did ool know 
legal and moral righl from wrong in respect of this act ; and if he did,whether 
he was disabled by insane delusion which mastered his self-eontn 
that when he put liis finger to that trigger, he could not have controlled it, 
even if < rarfield's wife had hung on his arm, and his children had been cling- 
ing to his skirts. The issue is of momentous importance and gravil v. You 
will see why it musl be so. If men like the prisoner were irresponsible, 
who would be safe? W'liat household would be secure ? What church 
would protecl its worshipers, even with the aid of the law ? Is it true, that 
everj man who has unfortunately had an insane cousin, an insane aunt, or 
some insane ancestor, though Bane himself to the extent of knowing perfectly, 
thai murder is legally and morally wrong, holds your life and mine, and those 
of our sons and daughters, and our wives, in the hollow of his right hand ? 
If such a man may stab, shoot, waylay and murder you, in any form, l>y 
day or by night, and his sufficient vindication shall be, not that he is insane, 
bul that somebody elst was, what is the security ofhumanlife? Naymore, 
if it were true thai every insane man- -for that is the doctrine of the counsel 
on the other side — no matter in what degree; m> matter whether from tempo- 
rary melancholia, or any of those casual and occasional aberrations of mind 
to Vt Inch all are subject, and which, as one of Guiteau's witnesses would have 
yon believe, embraces ten millions of people in the United States, one-fifth 
of the entire population exceeding that of any two States in the Union — 
if it he 1 rue, that all these men are licensed to murder you and yours, they 
are equally licensed to forge your name, to enter your house by midnight 
burglary, to stab your wife as she sleeps by your side, to force your strong 
box and seize your money ami \ our bonds, to lire your dwelling, lo Bel 
Washington City in flames, to poison your wells, to ravish your daughters. 
This is the nature of the license, for which the counsel for the pris- 
oner contends. The law is obligatory, on this theory, only on those who 
are perfectly rational. True, no such license is given by the law, bill it is 
to be established by "a jury of twelve emperors" in defiance of the law, 

and of the COUl'tS who declare it. Nay, more; the insane of this count r\ are 
to learn from the verdicl asked from this jury — I mean the actual and un- 
doubted insane — the inmates of lunatic asylums, consigned to seclusion 
by operation of law — that each one of them is at liberty to kill the keepers 
who restrain his liberty ; every one of them may unite with a sufficient 
n urn her of others, to open the gates of each asylum, and go out, knife ami 
tonh in hand, to spread ruin and conflagration. The law forbids such acts, 
and no American jury can be found to sanction them. More than this; 
on this new -tangled theory, every man who is insane, in any degree, is at 
liberty to slaughter any other insane ///<///. In the mercy of a good Provi- 
dence, we have not as vet been inmates of a lunatic asylum, but there 
is no one iii this great audience, who is not exposed to such a ca- 



55 

laniity. The case may occur, in which our friends, our own families, may 
lawfully consign either of us to a lunatic asylum. Brought by misfortune, 
by no fault of ours, into association with a hundred or a thousand lunatics, 
every one of them is at liberty, on this new theory, to take our lives. If 
such were the law, gentlemen, these benign institutions — asylums for the 
insane — must be practically abandoned. Let insane men as a class, under- 
stand that the law has no hold upon them, and that they can commit with im- 
punity all acts prohibited as crimes — and no troops in the command of 
General Sherman could so guard our asylums, as to protect the lives of the 
inmates from each other, or of the keepers from the inmates. Probably 
nowhere did this man's crime produce more horror than in these asylums. 
Assassination can look for no favor there. I do not doubt that if a jury 
could be impaneled in any insane asylum in this country, they would 
regard this man, not only as one whose presence would endanger them, 
but as one who had proved himself' unfit to live. 

The law, gentlemen, is founded upon reason. I ought not to be called 
upon to commend it to your deference and respect, for it is enough that it 
is announced as your controlling rule of action in the present case by the 
eminent jurist who presides in this tribunal. 

If this were a civil ease, I should discuss no question beyond the single 
one of the entire sanity of the prisoner. It seems to me to be established 
beyond all controversy. But as a capital crime is charged, I must go 
further ; for, whatever may be my views, some juror may entertain doubt. 
It will be necessary, therefore, to consider somewhat fully the general 
evidence in the cause. But, first, was he insane on the 2d of July ? If he 
was not, you have but one duty, and that is, to convict him. We claim 
that he was not insane. Grant, for the purpose of the argument, what I 
am confident not one soul of you believes, that his father was insane. 
His father did not assassinate President Garfield. Grant, if you please, 
what no one believes, that his uncle Abram was insane. His uncle 
Abram is not on trial, and did not murder the President. Grant the 
same of each and all his collateral relatives. None of them shot General 
Garfield. The prisoner did. Was he insane on that day ? We aver thai 
he never was insane, and certainly not on the 2d of July. The principal 
basis of the contrary claim is the atrocity, and the foolhardiness of this 
particular act. This is persistently urged by the prisoner from the dock. 
I do not deny his title, to be regarded as the most cold-blooded and seltish 
murderer of the last sixty centuries. Certainly there was atrocity enough. 
But he is not alone in this, as he may find, if he ever reaches the supposed 
realm where murderers are said to "herd together." Tfiefirst-born ofthi 
human raci murdered tin second-bom; and though the corpse was mute, 
the blood appealed from the ground to that God, who set upon the brow 
of the homicide the mark which doomed him to live thus branded — a 
punishment then more terrible than death. 



56 

Murder is a crime which has existed in all ages. We speak of one 
man, as knowing more than another, of human nature. There is one who 
knows mon of it than all of us, and speaking four thousand years ago to 
the whole human race, then living ami thereafter born, and knowing that 
from cupidity, from passion, from diabolic hate, from the thousand 
causes within his prevision, man would be tempted to shed the blood of his 
brother man, He inscribed on tallies of stone, committed to the keeping 
of a chosen and ancient people, the commandment : 

/'/, .a shalt not kill. 

Human life is differently estimated by Guiteau. "Life," says he, in hie 
letter of consolation to the widow, " is a fleeting dream, ami it matters 
little when one goes. A human life is of small value." That is all Vain 
took. As he told you the other day, Garfield might have slipped upon an 
orange peel. He who moulded each of us in his image, entertained dif- 
ferent views of the value of his own Handiwork : 

Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. 

The Prisoner. That was said three or four thousand years ago. That 
is old. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) And the prisoner in the dock tells you 
he believes that the God, who never grows old, and who placed that value 
on human life, placed none on the life of James A. Garfield, and as to that 
handed it over to this swindling lawyer to be dealt with as a fleeting 
dream. We have had the gospel of Guiteau, and he thinks you will indorse 
it. You see what is the Gospel of Him who created us all, and before 
whom each of us is to stand in judgment severally, and answer for the 
observance or the defiance of His supreme law. 

It is said this man is insam />;/ inheritance. From whom did he inherit 
it? From a homicide ? Ifirom a murderer ? JYo. He inherited it, as he 
claims, from tin father, who reverently worshipped God down to the day 
of his death; from the father who, through all his honored life, was 
recognized by the community in which he lived as a pure, upright, con- 
scientious and truthful man. He inherited it from the father, at whose 
bedside his own witness. Dr. Rice, stood iii the last hours of his life. He 
had been his attending physician ; he knew him well and intimately, and he 
test dies that Ik had never been insam ; never, never. Sou have the oath 
of the prisoner's brother, who slept in the same womb from which he 
came, until that sleep was awakened into life. This hrother swears that 
their father never was insane. Yon have the evidence of the sister, who 
came from the same womb, and .Mr. Scovilledifl not venture to put to his 
own wife the question, whether Luther W. Guiteau was insane. If he 
was insane, his family physician knew it ; his oldest son knew it ; his 
daughter knew it ; her husband, .Mr. Scoville knew it. None of them 



57 

has testified that they, or either of them, believed Luther W. Guiteau 
to be insane. 

Was the prisoner's mother insane ? Not one human being affirms it; 
not even the assassin. Going back to the grandparents, and tin ir grand- 
parents, there is not even a family tradition, that any of those whose blood 
mingled in his veins was ever a lunatic. More than that, you have clear 
and conclusive evidence, that if Luther W. Guiteau had murdered the 
President of that day, had waylaid him, had planned six weeks the means 
of safely killing him ; had been, like this man, a baffled and disappointed 
office-seeker, he could not have interposed the pretense of insanity. The 
defense is a falsehood and a fabrication. It is a sham and an imposture. 
But gentlemen, I do not deny, that there is another species of hereditary 
tendency to insanity, which the prisoner calls Abrahamic insanity. 

The Prisoner (Interjecting.) I am glad to hear you say it, Mr. Porter. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) It is described by him at other times as 
temporary mania, by Dr. Spitzka as moral insanity or congenital mon- 
strosity; but better by that most eminent scientist, Dr. Barker, as simple 
wickedness. It is inherited, not from the natural parent, but from another 
source. I reminded you yesterday, of the rebuke of the Saviour to the 
scribes and Pharisees : 

Those who are of the seed of Abraham prove it by doing the works of Abraham ; 
but ye are the children of your father the devil, who was a murderer from the begin- 
ning. 

That is the order of hereditary insanity, which he has derived from the 
source, laid bare by the Saviour of mankind, and of which you see so strik- 
ing an illustration in the prisoner's dock. What is insanity ? You have 
heard the evidence, and you have heard the authorities. Insanity is a 
disease of the brain. On that all substantially agree. Even Dr. Spitzka 
concurs in this. As I understand him, it is a product of disease of the 
brain. The first question, then is, was the man's brain diseased on the 2d 
of July ? We are relieved from any very extended discussion upon that 
point. If his brain w T as diseased, it was a singularly curable and evanescent 
disease. It left him in the same hour in n-hi<-/i h> assassinated tin: J'r>si- 
dent. At one time in his examination, it is true, he claimed that he was 
legally insane from the first day of June. His brain became diseased on 
that day, and it was cured on the second of July, when he had lodged that 
bullet in the vitals of the President. That is the species of disease of the 
brain this man had. He leaves you to infer, that if on the 16th of June, 
when he first wrote " I have shot the President," it has been true, and time 
and tide had favored him, this disease of the brain would have been cured 
on that day. If it had happened that Mrs. Garfield had not been leaning 
on the President's arm on the 18th of June, his curiously accommodating 
disease of the brain would have been cured at that date. If, on the sub- 



58 

sequenl day, when he sa\* the Presideni Leave the White Boose for a ride 
to the Soldier's Home, in company with some friends, li«' had happened t<» 
be ^iiiiii'.;- in the carriage alone, hie disease of the brain would have eva- 
porated into thin air on thai day. [f on the subsequent occasion, when he 
went, prayerfully prowling about thai inconspicuous place of worship, in 
order to n move the Presideni gently with his bull-dog bullel to paradise, 
there had nol been so many Christians present, and do hackman read al 
the door to hurry him to the jail for protection, his disease of the I rain 
would have disappeared <»n thai Sabbath day. If on the nighl of the Isl 
of July, Presideni Garfield had chanced to come oul atom from Secret; ry 
Blaine's house, his disease of the brain would have been spontaneously 
cured thai night. As in was, il lasted until the 2d of July, when he plant- 
ed that bull-dog bullel in the backbone of the President. Then, according 
to his account, itUfthim. This i- the issue, which he thinks he can safe-t 
ly submil to you. For this purpose I lay out of view all evidence excepl 
his own. He has made ii evidenl that he is a liar, as well as an assassin, 
and that he was instigated to this foul act, not by the Almighty, bul by 

the lather of liars. 

Bui ht H- go further, gentlemen. Is it not a little extraordinary, that a 
man who lias a disease of the brain, is one who, according to hi- own 
policy <>f life insurance, as well as his own evidence, and his statements to 
the physicians, never hail a serious illness of any sort in hi- life, never had 
a physician, ami never suffered from Bickness excepl in jail, ami that mere- 
ly by malaria ami indigestion, produced by overfeasting at one of his 
thanksgiving levees? We find a mm in perfect health now, as every 
physician who has examined him testifies, who ha- suffered in the past no 
ailment, except one, originating in his blasphemous rendering of the com- 
mandment, "Thou shall no| commit adult cry," — from which he seems to 
have recovered without the aid of a physician —who claims to have been 
Suddenly overtaken on the 1st of June with a disease of the lirain. yet 
continued to Live at a "high-toned boarding house" at the expense of the 
proprietress ; did not pay a dollar for his hoard : was punctual in taking 
hi- baths; punctual at breakfast, al dinner, a1 tea : punctual at nighl : 
slept well, ate heartily, rose early, and spent the day at Lafayette s.piaic 
or in making preparations elsewhere t" murder (he President, when he 
found a favorable opportunity to butcher him nh>m. This he calls tem- 
porary mania y Abrahamic mania. This is the peculiar disease of the 
brain, which resulted in a political murder, for the ostensible benefit of the 
stalwarts of t he Republican pan \ . 

The Prisoneu. For the benefil of the American people, sir. A removal 

and not a murder. They are well satisfied with it, too. 

Mr. Porteh. Gentlemen, if 1 went no further, do you believe that this 
man's brain was diseased on the 2d of July ? I deal with nothing else 



59 

now. Was his brain diseased, and did the disease come and go, just as it 
happened that President Garfield went out alone, or with his wife, or with 
his children, or drove to tin- Soldiers 1 Home, or rode to the railway depot? 
Do you believe that the right remedy for a disease of the brain is, to 
make six weeks' preparation for shooting another man through the spine? 
Yet with him, it proved a perfect and effectual cure. That is the case as 
he presents it, But, gentlemen, in what other aspects is this matter pre- 
sented for your consideration ? I should remind you, because it is worthy 
of note, that this pretense of insanity did not originate with Mr. Scoville, 
but with the prisoner, who now more than half disclaims it. He was en- 
gaged for six weeks in making preparation for the murder of Garfield, 
and for his ownsafety against the natural consequences of the act. He 
did not wish to be removed to paradise with President Garfield. He was 
a Christian man, a theologian, a praying man, and while he prayed that 
Garfield might be removed, he prayed with still more earnest fervor that 
he might be ] (reserved from sharing his fate. He provided, first, for a 
haekman, to save him from the indignation of the community, for an act 
of atrocious legal and moral wrong, which he knew would subject him to 
the peril of instant death. He was a lawyer, and he had carefully pre- 
pared his defense. What was that defense, as first proposed ? That his 
killing was no murder, for he had no malice. In the very hour of the 
murder, that mock defense was to be on its way over the telegraph wires, 
not only in this country, but also beneath the ocean and to other lands. In 
effect it was this : 

I had no malice. This is not an act of murder, but of patriotic devotion. 

He had, however, gone farther in his preparations than that. He did 
not publish his further devices in his papers then, but he had pn -arranged 
another alternative defense. It was in substance this : 

I thought I was legally insane, but not in fact insane. That Was my opinion during 
this period of preparation. I knew tint many man had called me a crank ; and a 
crank is one who is very insane. I knew that I could prove it by fifty physicians, if I 
had money enough to get them ; for physicians can easily be bought. I shall have money 
enough for that purpose, but I shall be cmferring a benefit upon the Stalwart party, 
which will promptly and gladly respond to the tiist ring of my bell, and when I call 
upon the beneficiaries to contribute, the checks will roll in upon me lor hundreds and 
thousands. 

This was plainly his pre-arranged alternative. 

He neglected no other precaution for his own safety, and if he over- 
looked M is, it was evidently the only j>r<-<tit<in,i he neglected. But he 
did not overlook it, and he admits it. Legal insanity ! murder without 
malice ! patriotic murder ! Gentlemen, you see that from the beginning, 
he was apprehensive that he might be driven to this defense, and he pro- 
vided for it. How it happened, that so soon after the murder, and within 
48 hours, he was in consultation with his leading counsel, we do not know. 



60 

We do know, that Prom the Sundaj or Monday, I do not remember 
which, when Mr. Scoville arrived, the press of the counl ry has been bur- 
dened with allegations of the prisoner's insanity. 

The Prisoner. Mr. Scoville called as a Friend, and no1 as counsel. 

Mr. Porter. Undoubtedly; bul it was an opportune call, when the 
prisoner Deeded it. 

The Prisoner. Nothing was said aboul my defense, until after I was 
indicted. 

Mr. Porter. I thoughl Mr. Scoville intimated thai there was something 
Baid aboul his defense, and thai tin claim of inspiration was made in his 
presence; and I have waited to see him come forward and swear t<> it, but 
ha\ e \\ aited in vain. 

Tin Prisoner. Because he is my counsel. Mr. Brooks swore to it. sir. 
Corkhill and Bailey v.ot the information in the oote-book on the 2d or 3d 
of July, and it was suppressed. 

Mr. Porter. I shall, in due time, come to Mr. Brooks. Again, on 
this question of insanity, there is a mosl excellenl test. It' he was ever 
insane, there was a time when he became so. This man had led a vagrant 
andan idle life. If he was insane somebody knew it. All hi^ life he had 
been among other men, and he knew who they were. Certainly he has a 
more remarkable memory than any other man I ever saw, either in or out 
of court. He knew whothej were, ami he has had the benefit of processto 
subpoena anybody and everybody, by the authority of the government and 
at its expense, a thing which, though authorized here by local law, was 
never before -lone in any country in the world, so far as I have hear- 1. 

The Prisoner. I have had aboul one-third as many witnesses as the 

prosecution has, sir. 

Mr. Porter. He hns produced all he could find. Now, who are those 

who would be likely to know, and to km.w besl ? One was the father who 
begol him. Ilei> dead, ami in a spirit of fairness to the prisoner, we per- 
mitted the production in evidence of a letter of the dead father, not other- 
wise admissible. I shall recur to this letter again. Another witness was 
his living sister. She has been sworn. I shall have occasion to refer to 
her testimony. Another was his brother-in-law, < S-eorge W. Scoville. I am 
801TJ to saj thai I shall not be aide to refer to his testimony. For some 
reason il has no1 been given. The man mosl competenl to speak chooses 
to do so without the rigid restrainl of an oath. 

The Prisoner. He is my counsel, sir, and it would not be proper for 
him to be a w it ness. 

. Mr. Porter. Another, John \V. Guiteau, his brother, has spoken, and 
has told you that, knowing him from the time he came from his mother's 



61 

womb, down to a period after the President's death, his conviction then 
was that he was perfectly sane, but that he was instigated by the devil. 

The Prisoner. He is not my reference, and has not known anything 
about me for twenty years. That is the kind of a brother he has been to 
me. I have got first-class men as references. 

Mr. Porter. There is one other witness, who better than all else ought 
to know whether he was sane or insane. That is the woman who loved 
him. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I did not love her. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Few have loved him. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) It was a one-sided affair. 

Miv Porter. (Continuing.) The woman who married him. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That was a swindle. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) The woman who slept with him. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Sometimes she did and sometimes she 
didn't. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) The woman who borrowed for him ; the 
Avoman who gave the earnings of her industry to furnish him with money, 
which he expended on street prostitutes, the woman whose divorce was ob- 
tained by his procurement 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I did not love her, and I have no busi- 
ness to have married her. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing) and by such dastardly meanness and 

ignominy that it horrifies one even to name it, in connection with the fact 
that he and the adulteress were witnesses in the proceeding for " remov- 
ing" his wife. 

The Prisoxkr. That happened about ten years ago, and has nothing to 
do with this case one way or the other. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Gentlemen, these are the men and women 
who ought t<> know whether he was sane or insane, and when he became so. 
Let us see whom he has called. The men whom he cheated and swindled, 
those whom he defrauded into furnishing him with lecture rooms and 
procuring advertisements for him, those who were disgusted with his blas- 
phemies and his egotism, when he, delivered the stolen lectures, which he 
claimed were the work of inspiration. Such witnesses he called. He also 
called a Dr. Rice, who has been the physician of his father. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I never saw Rice but two or three times 
in myjife; know nothing about him; and care nothing about him. 

.Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) He never saw him but two or three times in 
his life. He says so, and it is probably true. It is confirmed by what Dr. 
Rice says, of what occurred on those two or three occasions when he casu- 
ally saw him. This gentleman is brought here to prove, that the prisoner 



G2 

was insane on the 2d of July, 1881, fim years after they met and parted. 
( >f bis Ban it v on the 2d of July, Dr. Rice knew qo more than you or I did : 
hut it did appear from hi^ testimony, thai an incident occurred in the year 
. of which the doctor was not a witm 88, bul which was reported to him 
liv his Bister, in connection with the lifting <>!' thai as againsl her life. 

The Pris< mi:. T7iat never took place. 

Mr. Porter. He also testifies to an incident, nol improbable, in connec- 
tion with his accustomed outbreaks after the manner of the Oneida Com- 
munity, which occiii red in a private ii< >ns<- where lie casually met him, and 
led Iii tit to suspeel his insanity. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) The kind thai Dr. Barker talked about — 
transitory mania ; that is aU /'■/,>;,,,. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Dr. Rice describes it as insanity without 
delusion, without hallucination and without illusion, in other words, with- 
out diseasi ofth brain. It was a curious order of insanity which did uol 
lead the doctor even to sign a certificate, as h> was asked to do. It was 
insanity of a kind which did oo1 lead the doctor to confer with another 
physician as required by law, and in respect ofwhichMrs. Scoville frankly 
says in her testimony thai if the doctor did tell her the things he swears 
to now, sh did not so understand it. Dr. Rice's testimony has Keen com- 
mented upon so much thai I need nol read it in full, but the Tact thai he 
swore thai Luther W. (luiieau was not insant may not now he fresh inyour 
recollection. Perhaps I had better read a little of the context, as the prison- 
er Baj - I he doctor never saw him hut t vvice or three times. It was in June 

or. Inly, L876. .Mrs. Scoville al firsl gol the date wrongs but it was after- 
wards corrected, ami this was undoubtedly due to her defeel of memory. 
She had not the dates fresh in mind. The only fad beyond what Mrs. 
Scoville stated — and of that I shall speak presently — with regard to liis in- 
sanity, was t his : 

1 saw him during an ordinary evening conversation suddenly arise and appeal to those 
w ho \\ civ Dear him to come to the Lord. 

.Mr. Scoville. l'Voiu what page do you read? 

Mr. Porter. I was reading from page 353, at that time. I read further 

now in relation to the prisoner's father : 

Q. Was Luther W. Guiteau, during the time thai you attend) '1 him, derangi <i '. 

The W ii m bs, Insane ? 

Mr. Scovtj i i . Yes . out of Iii- mi ml or whatever you call it. 

A. / (/" ift think I" was. 

That was true, even of the last days of his life, though the prisoner has 
alleged thai his father was deranged for some considerable period before 
his death. I think he mentioned it as six weeks. At the bottom of page 
355 I >i'. Rice Is asked : 



63 

Did you ever meet him (the prisoner) afterwards? — A. No, sir ; I never met him 

since. , 

# * * * * * * 

Q. State to the jury, if you know, about his leaving Colonel Shears — 

That was where this extraordinary circumstance occurred, of his appeal 
to the bystanders, in tin On< ida Community fashion, to come to the Lord. 

— or anything further connected with his conduct there ?— A. I was informed that he 
borrowed .«,//,, clothing and disappeared all at ona without paying for his board. 

That is the testimony set up as a defense for the murder of Garfield, 
jir, */<<//:■< afterwards, and this is the witness the prisoner and his brother- 
in-law, thought would he more useful to him than his sister Flora, than 
the other inmates of the house, than his step-mother, than all those who 
lived with him, than all those who knew him in his household relations. 
Then we have the ex-Unitarian minister who had retired, perhaps for 
conscience sake, into a gathering of those who, like Dr. Spitzka, did not 
care to acknowledge the ( 'reator, that made them ; or who, like Dr. 
Kiernan, did not believe in a future state of existence. I pass him, and 
others like him, because, of course, they did not in any just sense know 
him, and had no means of forming an intelligent opinion, either by personal 
acquaintance or otherwise. I come now to Mrs. Scoville, pausing for a 
moment to refer to the record. 

The Prisoner. That gives me time to say that I am in receipt of a 
letter from a New York gentleman, wdto says he has conversed with two 
hundred and fifty intelligent people, and that they an <ill<>ft/n (>/>i/tin /t 
that ih< Almighty ins/>!r<</ my act. I have a letter from a prominent 
gentleman in Maryland, a first-class lawyer, wdio says that I will go into 
history, by the side of Grant and Washington. That is their opinion of 
this matter. 

Mr. Portkr. That is very good acting, gentlemen of the jury. I shall 
have to ask you to indulge me in reading some passages from Mrs. Se- 
ville's evidence, because I believe her to be a sincere woman, and while I 
am not willing to adopt all her opinions, and I think you would not, yet the 
facts she states are well worth knowing, ami considering. Her opinions 
are naturall;, biased, as I hope your sisters 1 or nunc would be, if we were in 
peril of approaching death, and especially an ignominious death. In respeel 
of her mother, she speaks of her principal difficulty as neuralgia. I hope 
none of you are so unfortunate as some of us are, as to be occasional suffer- 
ers from this complaint, «but I am very sure that none of you will think 
it is a very marked indication of insanity. The mother was seriously 
ill at one time, ami her hair was cutoff, as one among otherremedial agen- 
cies often resorted to in ordinary fevers, and in other inflammatory dis- 
eases. It is one of the known and approved methods of cooling the head 
when it is heated by the delirium of fever or by other temporary catiM is, 



C4 

and it often gives relief to the patient. It is nol regarded as an evidence 
of, or a remedy for, insanity. The length of the hair is nol supposed to 
indicate, or to affecl very materially the condition of the brain in respect 
of Banity. Mr. Reed has given yon to understand thai the prisoner, down 
t<> the time he entered the Oneida Community, was a perfectly moral, 
pure, gentle, kindly, and dutiful boy. Is this true? What becomes of 
thai 1>"M and reckless allegation, which rests upon hi^ own statement, 
and Mr. Scoville's unsworn indorsement, thai when he was a boy he was 
struck in a school-boy encounter with a stone, which penetrated so deeply 
into the skull thai you could introduce your anger now, half an bach into 
the hole. 

The Prison] k. That did not happen to tafo place, sir. 

Mr. Porter. I know ii did not, and I was sure it was a fiction when the 
plaster casl was produced 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I never said anything aboul it, sir. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing) and when the doctor swore thai there 

was nol only no cavity on that side of his head into which yon could in- 
troduce your finger half an inch, bul none into which yon could introduce 
j our finger at all 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) 5Tes there is. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing) — ■ — and that the scar to which he refers is 
one of a scalp wound simply. 

The Prisoner. It is aboul a sixteenth of an inch, and you can Bee it. 

Mr. Porter. The doctor and the prisoner, as usual, disagree. It was 
paraded before you in the opening thai he was a good, moral, sane, in- 
telligent, and bright l»o\ until he came to he L 9 years of age. Of course, 
in quoting the language of counsel, I do so only, according to the effecl 
and import of his statement. I do nol profess to give his precise words, 
for it would take me too long to turn to the particular passages. Von 
know the impression the argumenl was intended to convey to you. 

We come to another extraordinary statement of Mr. Reed, by way of 
accounting for his alleged insanity. This boj lived, as counsel tellsyou, 
d\ years, and was still unable to talk. Again and again in his argument he 
repeated this, as a strong circumstance tending to show that there was 
some deficiency in the boy, and some predisposition to insanity. //> could 

not talk! He was sent to scl 1 to learn to talk. He had lived six years 

withoul being able to speak the name of hi< father *or his mother, or to ex- 
press his ordinary wants ! The amiability, the morality, the excellence of 

this boy, and his inability to talk are based on page 168 of Mrs. Scoville's 

evidence. What she Saj - is : 

I remember that he was very active, and what you would call a troublesome child, be- 
cause he was bo verj active, 



65 

He has kept up that character ever since, as President Garfield learned to 
his cost. 

That is the main thing I can remember about Lis babyhood. II< was very pre- 
cocious; 11/ smart. 

How did she rind that out, from a boy that couldn't talk? 

He seemed to be able to make enough noise in every other way, but he could not 
talk plain so that anybody could understand him. 

Q. State to the jury any instances that you remember of his failure to talk. 

Then she goes on to say, he had the fever and ague, and during that 
time he used to lie down on the floor behind the stove. Of course, you 
know that children with fever and ague ought hardly to be called insane, 
because they put themselves, when cold, in a position where they can get 
warmth. I do not think that is a very controlling evidence of insanity. 

At these times — 

And you will remember, this was when he was but five years old — 

he would invariably lie down behind the stove and would sing his little song, ' ' Peel along, 
Old Ban Tucker" — 

A boy who couldn't talk, but could sing his habitual song ! — 

whenever he had these chills. I remember that my father got provoked because he 
would not speak plain. 

"Was a father ever provoked with his child because he could not talk ? 
Oh, no; but in this instance it was because he would not speak plain. 

He would say " Ped along," and would not say anything else. He could not say 
any of it plain, but that word in particular was very peculiar. 

He would say " ped " for " come." Well, it was a song, which he had 
learned while lie was younger, and having that lisp in the tongue which is 
so common with children, and being unable to pronounce c or q at the 
period when he learned the song, he, as << lisping bog, substituted "ped 
along" to avoid a difficulty of articulation, which made him, when he 
spoke of quail, that abounded around his father's house, call them "pail;" 
and this childish and lisping utterance is gravely put forward as evidence 
that on the 2d of July 1881, when he, being forty years of age, murdered 
the President, he must have been insane, because thirty-five years before, 
when he was a boy, chilled by fever and ague, he crept behind the stove 
in the rigor of his chills, and sung his little song, substituting " ped 
along" for " come along," and this is seriously urged to you, in order 
that you may nol recognize the color of the bloody hands he now holds up 
to you. 

At all events, his father ought to know something of this unexampled 
proof of insanity. It is true that his father when the boy persisted in say- 
ing " pail " for " quail," immediately punished him. He became provoked 
one day, and said he knew the boy cpuld talk plain, if he chose to maki 



66 

///- effort^ and the father chastised him ; whereal Mrs. Scoville, then a lit- 
tle girl, was greatly Bhocked. The father, more competenl than her t<> 
judge, thoughl it was from perverseness in tht child. He thought there 
was no actual impedimenl of speech, bul the boy would, not, or did nol 
correcl the babit, and in the end be was kindly senl to school where he al 
once got over it. I never heard before of a boy being sent to school to learn 
to talk, and I do nol think you ever heard such a trivial and childish in- 
cidenl magnified into a theme of forensic eloquence, as being clear and 
Cogenl evidence that a lisping boy was bom utterly irresponsible and with 
eneral and plenary licensi to murder, derived from defecl of perfect 
utterance when he was a mere child. In regard to dates, Mrs. Scoville 
states that -hf was married the Lsl of January, L852or ] Lid not re- 

member which. There are few ladies who forgel the day they were married, 
hut you perceive that in respecl to dates, her memory is by no means dear. 
Ii sometimes happens with people oi the highesl intelligence and integrity, 
thai they are unable to recall dates with accuracy and precision. She 
makes one or two unimportant mistakes, which I attribute solely to an in- 
firmity of memory, by no means unusual. 

Q. Was there anything noticeable in him al thai time? 

That was ai the time, when at the age of twelve, he went from home 

to - 1 1 and lived as an inmate of her In. use — 

A. I do nol remember anything excepl thai he was very affectionate and very much 
attached to me. 

She undoubtedly thoughl he was, and probably she had nol the slightest 
idea that this affection was merely that of presenl interest, because she 
gave him his bread and butter and sugar, and put him to bed every night. 
She little thought then thai there was a sleeping devil there, which, when 
the time should come, would nerve his strong hut cowardly and trembling 
armtolifl an ax to strike al her in his wrath, although the overheated 
and faltering coward had sufficient self-control, not to redden the ax with 

his sister's warm hi 1. The same spirit was there then, thai was burning 

within him afterward-, when he aimed the pistol, and did not restrainhim- 

self, because he thoughl it would promote his personal and private inter- 

ud change the administration which had ignored his claim- to office. 

She saw him at intervals, from time to time, and we find that all there is 

of it i- -imply this, that on one occasion, this man, who, as Mr. Scoville pre- 
tended, never madea joke in Ins life, who wa- a special and peculiar Guit- 

eau, who wa- honest, who wa- above all the n-t of hi- honored family, a 

pure and reli'j,'ious-minded man, came to her. She -ay- : 

1 do nol think lie told me the name of the gentleman win. admitted him, but I re 
member distinctly his saying thai they asked him three questions, and he answered 

two, and laughing about it as it it wa- a good joke thai be gOl in BO ea<y. 



That was the introduction to the American bar, by Mr. Reed, of his 
present client. 

Q. Did you continue to know him for some time after that, and see him daily? 

That was in 1875— 

A. Yes, sir; he was around the house and some of the time in your office. 

That of his senior counsel on this trial. 

She proceeds to describe his being brought back by Mr. Scoville from 
the New York Tombs, and then she says, she was rather mixed up in the 
dates, that while he was in Chicago after he left her house, he was shift- 
ing around from place to place, as he always was. Then she comes down 
to 1876 : 

He was very hard to get along with; that is, he was in what I call an exalted state; 
I have said it was a highfalutin state. 1 do not know as that expresses anything. I 
could not do anything with him. He was willing to do anything \ wanted him to do, 
but he did it in such a way, as to annoy me more than if I had not asked him to do it. 

You know r he parted from the Oneida Community on the labor question. 
Me never liked work. His ideas were grander : 

Q. What else took place in 1875? — A. Well, he seemed not able to work very much, 
and when he was set to do anything he would be overpowered with the heat, and have 
to give up very soon and go into the house. That is the time that he raised the ax to 
me, when I requested him to do something, after he was overpowered with the heat 
and exhausted. 

She thinks it was in 1875, but it turned out afterwards to be in 1876. 
She told him the butcher was coming, and she don't conceal the fact that 
she was angry at his refusal to make way for the butcher, and exhibited a 
somewhat warm temper, and picked up one of the sticks for the purpose 
of removing it from the path. Undoubtedly he supposed that she meant 
to use it by way of forcing him to do what she wanted, and he, cow r ard as 
he is, lifted the ax to strike at his sister. 

The Prisoner. That never occurred. 

Mr. Poster. His sister swears it did occur, and she is a woman of 
truth 

The Prisoner. She swore she might have been mistaken. 

Mr. Porter. (Interposing.) I did not hear it, or if I did, I do not re- 
call it. She did not come into court with bloody hands, and she went out 
of it as she entered it, an honest and upright woman, believing what she 
averred, whether it was for the government or for the prisoner. For 
myself, I have lifted no ax against his sister. He did on a memorable 
occasion. 

The Prisoner. That is false. She didn't swear positively that I did. 



68 

Mr. Pob 1 1 i:. i Reading:) 

I was \irv much excited, and I said, "Take ilii- i>'>y. and take him off the place; 
can i have him lure any longer. He will <l" some mischief." 

Thai is the summary of the ax Btory. Lei us Bee what further Bhe 
-a\ - : 

ble seemed different in some respects from what he was when I had seen him last. 
II. seemed to have more notion of doing something, and of being something in the 
world. II<- mentioned several projects thai he wanted to carry out. 

We come now t" whal in one view ie verj important. Mrs. Scoville 
had said, as yon remember, thai be acted curiously when Bhe visited him 
:ii the Oneida Community. He would no1 talk to her; and as when he 
was aboul going to the Oneida Community Bhe could nol reason with 
hi in. so, when she visited him there, he was so possessed with the doctrines 
of his father and of the Oneida Community thai -he could nol do any- 
thing with him, and she really thought he \v;i- half crazy. But <<""■ Wi 
,■,,,<>■ to tht crucial test; here is his own Bister, the only one who has 
really stood faithfully and devotedly by him, to save him in the hour of 
imminent peril. She tells you frankly ami honestly how it was with him 
down to the time when he was thirty-live year- of age. 

The Prisoner. 1 have had a good deal of sympathy by the letters I get, 
sir ; tin great muss <>j' tin American peoplt "r< for m> . 

.Mr. Porter: 

The next thing 1 remember particularly aboul him was the raising of the ax: "/ had 
never had any thought of him before that he was not in Ids rightmind." 

Gentlemen, should not that end this case? I>" you seriously believe 
this man was insane ? As to the ax story, while to Mrs. Scoville it would 
really ami naturally suggesl the idea that he was partially ou1 ofhismind, 
to jrou, with the lighl of antecedent facts of which -lie knew nothing, for 
Bhe was away when he, in a -pint of a dastardly coward, struck his father 
in the hark, and when he was sitting at bis own table and at a singular 
disad> antag< 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That never happened. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) she .lid not know thai it was the same man 
who, at a later date, struck one human being in the face, and thai his 
brother and benefactor, who had befriended him. This did nol occuruntil 
the year i v 7'.». She did nol then knov* thai the same spirit which dictated 
the lifting of that ax, was afterwards to impel him to the direction of a more 
formidable and deadly weapon againsl the lir-t life in the republic. It is 
not strange thai she should have thought at thai time thai he was par- 
tialis <>nt of his head. But, after this cowardly and brutal assault, all 
through her testimony we find do acl or utterance indicative of insanity. 
She visited him, and he visited her The tidings came to her of this cul- 



69 

ruinating crime, and, faithful even unto death, she came here to defend 
the brother who would have cloven her skull. This lifting of the ax 
against his sister, in entire harmony with the depravity of the bloody- 
handed murderer, is the only evidence of insanity that can be raked out 
of this fosty years, by his own devoted and faithful sister. So much for 
Mrs. Scoville. 

The Prisoner. It was very stupid of tin Scovilles to say anything 
about that ax business. That's part of their theory, and the prosecution are 
using- it in a way they didn't intend it should be used. That is about as 
smart as the Scoville family are. The whole thing is bosh from beginning 
to end. 

Mr. Porter. We do find that in a period of forty years, after a roving 
life from State to State, and among multitudes of men, through the local 
police courts, through the various jails, through the court-rooms in which 
he was not a fortunate practitioner, but in which he boasted of his signal 
success in defending a single lawsuit and getting beaten at that, there 
happens to be one among all these multitudes whom he can call to prove 
apparent insanity, and to a certain extent there is a tendency in that 
direction. It was to prove <//< Abrahamic order of insanity. The primary 
purpose of calling this witness, who swears that he was a lawyer, and that 
he has been secretly acting as counsel in this case, though not appearing 
in court, was to prove the insanity of the prisoner. That witness wrote 
letters to or through his son, and was in doubt whether they were 
in his handwriting, in order to establish the fact of insanity of Guiteau. 
I will deal with that before I come to the other aspect of his evidence. He 
endeavored to impress you with the belief that Luther W. Guiteau, the 
father of the prisoner was insane, and would have had a defense if he bad 
murdered the President. He gives a most excellent character the elder 
Guiteau, absolves him from all homicidal tendency, attests no act of de- 
lusion, and nothing inconsistent with an upright and honorable life, but 
-ays lie had peculiar religious views, and one of them was a very bloody 
one. lie tell this strange story. I do not know but there is somebody 
even in the jury-box who believes it. It may possibly be ; and lest some- 
body should credit it, I wish to read his testimony. Speaking of a certain 
family, this peaceable, orderly, law-abiding and religious banker said : 

They ought t<> have all bet u sacrificed. 

Q. You may state what lie said as to the family, and if there was anything more of 
the conversation, state it fully ? — A. I was somewhat astonished to hear that expres- 
sion from him ; hut when I came to find out who it was, and what it meant, it was 
a family, if 1 remember right, by the name of Leonard P. Swett and his wife. 

Dragging in, neck and heels, and without excuse, a lawyer, one of t In- 
most brilliant and most eminent members of the American bar, one who, 
if he had been here as counsel for the prisoner, would have controlled his 



70 

client, and saved you from the levity, obscenity and blasphemy which has 
made the air of this Couii so thick and foul : but it tarns oul it was noi 
him, bul Bomebody else. 

This is the \\:i\ In- explained it to me. 

Q What was the boy's Dame? — A. Thai I cannol remember. 

Q Was In- :i sonoJ Leonard I'. Swett?— A. Nbl Bwett, bul Sweet; it was a son of 
Martin I'. Bweet. I mighl state further thai his idea was thai all that was necessary 
was in beli< ■■ in Jesus Christ. 

1 1 « re is a 111:111 whose life Btands nut in the sunlight, in respect of whom 
we have •■ailed the foremosl citizens of that town ami county, men who 
have heM the highest professional ami official positions; men of character; 
men >'\ weight; men associated with him in public life; men who say that 
he stood second to l»ui one man, and that the celebrated and distinguished 
lawyer whom I have mentioned ; and they all testify that the prisoner's 
father was eminently conspicuous for his perfecl purity and integrity of 
character. He was not the man to lie the father of a murderer. Hut this 

lawyer for Scoville and for Guiteau, this man Amerling, who does tl ut- 

door work of the cause, conies to do a little of the in-door work, and BWearS 
against a dead man, who lies molderiug and mute, that the honored father 
of the prisoner deliberately recommended to the father ami a mother of 
one equally dear to them to butcher their sou. 

You do not believe it. I do not believe it. Above all, the man who 
uttered it did not believe it. Let us look a little further at this man's 
testimony. 

Again, Mr. Davidge presses him on that pretended conversation, and 
it is a very extraordinary one; this deliberate recommendation by a 
man of pure chai'acter to a father and mother to butcher their own son 
because he differed from them in his conviction aboul the propriety of 
going to the Oneida Community. Take this strange story a little fur- 
ther. Here is an incident that had been referred to in his direct 
examinal ion. 

" It was alone- aboul L86V or 1868." 
Said Mr. Da\ idge: 

/ don't pretend to fix tin time. Witness: I will not, because 1 cannot do it; but 
there was James Cochran and 1.. \\ . Guiteau upon one side of the question and 
myself and Mr. Dexter Knowlton, thai is now hanker at Freeport, on the other 
side. The question was as to the taxation. I said a good deal, and the old gentle 
man became very angry at what I said — 

'This proves, as you will observe, that Luther W. Guiteau was insane — 

and he pitched into me, and 1. in reply, when I had the close, improved the opportunity 
and aid this: 1 said thai the old gentleman, I.. \Y . Guiteau, was well fitted to till 
all positions, hut there was one In- was besl qualified to till, and that \sa~ with an 
apron from his chiii down to his tors, with a knife in his hand, in the kitchen of 
the oncida Community, peeling potatoes. And the old gentleman became verj 
angry at that. 



71 

This impudent boy, whom he had befriended; this boy whom he had 
helped on to fortune; this boy who had grown meantime to manhood, 
comes here now as associate counsel and witness, and really thinks that 
with a bank book showing that he had $3,000 on deposit when he left home, 
this jury will swallow his testimony. Gentlemen of the jury, I do not be- 
lieve any one of you would think of taking your bank book with you, in 
order to give credit to your statements on oath, when subpoenaed in a court 
of justice. This is the way in which that young man, older now, and 
perhaps weaker, spoke in 180G of one of the first citizens of the county in 
which he lived, a man with gray hair, and in an elevated and honorable 
position. This insult offered to that father, he says, irritated the old 
gentleman, and he grew very angry. Clearly the man was insane. Then 
he proceeds to say: 

I afterwards met this man (Guiteau, the prisoner). 

For once I was half inclined to believe that this lawyer told the truth. 

He (the prisoner) said my life ought to have been taken from me, but God ad- 
vised it otherwise, or ordered it otherwise. 

This is one of the things I had forgotton, in respect of which a spark of 
humanity seemed to have flashed up in the prisoner's In-east, but it turned 
out that even this was untrue, for the prisoner then said: 

Prisoner: If you refer to me it is absolutely false. 

Mr. Porter. It is one of the peculiarities of Guiteau, that the tur- 
bulence of his hitter and intense passion has not restrained him from 
denouncing as a false witness, each of his own counsel who have volun- 
teered to be sworn, and from branding as a liar the leading counsel 
who closed the argument in his behalf. The witness, after the denial, 
reasserted the fact, which he evidently thought would be beneficial to 
prisoner. 

He was the one that mentioned it to me, and I afterwards talked to his father 
about it, and then his father said I must not mind what he said- 
Let us look a little further, and we will find that this witness never saw 
the prisoner in his life until he came to this court-room, and the prisoner 
says so; and yet you perceive, how diligent associate counsel seek to sup- 
plement the defense, by thrusting forward a version of the facts, which 
even the prisoner confesses, against his interest, is an utter fabrication. 

I pass Amerling now, and come to the curious witness North. There, 
too, was one who lets us into the interior history of the earlier life of the 
homicide, and who shows on what, basis it was that Mr. Reed, simultaneously 
witness and counsel, gravely told you that this was a moral, a good, an up- 
right, a Christian, a well-behaved, and a perfectly sane boy, until he went 
to the Oneida Community, where he was seduced and corrupted. Thomas 
North did know him, and his father. I propose to refer you to his evi- 



dence. It will nol take much time. All thia puerile mockery <>f North, 
as to Guiteau the elder, rests in the idle and fabulous pretense thai he 
honestly believed thai the father of the prisoner thought />< would never 
die. The conclusive and overwhelming fact is broughl oul by the evidence, 
that the father, yen- before his death insured his life, and signed the 
application, which has been produced before you; and thai this man, whoi 
according to North's theory, believed he would never die, wenl to a lawyer 

six iths before his death and had his last will and testamenl prepared 

and executed. 

We have also the fabricated Btory, as I believe it to be, and as I think 
you will, in view of the circumstances of the case, that the father rejected 
all medical aid. Ii afterwards ap eared, that he had attending physi- 
cians for years, physicians for his daughter, for his wife, and for himself 
down to the very day of his death. It is gravely and seriously claimed 
that the father had gone through the idie and foolish performance of kneel- 
ing at the bedside of his daughter, Flora, and commanding the unclean 
spirit to come oul of her, and really supposed it would save her life. Do 
you not think that this storywould rest on hitter foundation, if Flora, the 
daughter, were here to tell it'/ It would not do to have Flora here. It 
would no more do to hate her here, than to have Mr. Scoville sworn, 
for cross-examination might elicit disagreeable facts. 

According to North's version, her father kneeled by the bedside with 
her hands in his, and began to pray to God Almighty, and commanded 
the disease to leave her in the name of Christ. 

S.. also with the other nameless woman, as to whom this man North testi- 
fies. If we wanted anything to enable us to characterize the witness North, 
could you find anything more significant than this? .Mark you, he would 
have you believe thai Luther W. Guiteau, his benefactor, the county clerk 

in whose office he earned his bread, and whose private roof gave him a 
slicker, was a lunatic. So, tOO, of his marvelous story of the "Cave of the 
Winds," as he, noi being familiar with the locality, denominated it. 
Guiteau's father was an old gentleman, as you remember, at the time it 
occurred. It was in 1858. Mr. Guiteau took his clerk to Niagara Falls on 
a pleasure excursion. They arrived at what North calls the "Cave of the 
Winds." He was very impressive and oratorical on the witness stand, lie 
described the scene, so that you saw it, like a panorama. Let us once again 
listen to this marvelous story, establishing beyond all controversy that 
Luther \Y. Guil tail was insane : 

On the Isl of July or the 2d of July, 1858, he and 1 started Easl on a vacation trip 
and we stopped at Niagara Falls We spent one day there, and bired a hack in t lie 
morning, paying five dollars for the use of il for the day, with driver. 

Am. mil: other sights that we went to visit is what is called the Cave of the Winds. 
We wenl to a building to dre6S for thai purpose in oil-cloth clothing, and when 1 firsl 
noticed our appearand — our shadows upon the ground— we were very much like a 



73 

couple of Esquimaux Indians. We descended a perpendicular place — I forget now 
■whether there was an elevator, or something like that — 

Elevators in 1858 ! 

or by perpendicular steps ; then we had to descend by stone steps to the mouth of the 
Cave of the Winds. We had a negro guide. Of course he was in advance of both of 
us. I was next to him, and Mr. Guiteau just behind me. We got to the mouth of the 
cave, and the guide had remained in behind the waterfall, and as I was in the act of 
doing so. I looked behind me to see where Mr. Guiteau was, and he was about, my 
recollection now would be, three rods behind me, and about in this attitude (illus- 
trating by holding both hands in front on a level with the chest, about three feet apart, 
the palms downward) — 

You remember the story, and the emphasis and mock oratory with which 
he told all this — 

■os if suddenly smitten into a marble statue — as white as marble — and there he stood, 
as it were, fixed in that one position. I at once returned to him. 

Of course lie would ; an insane man standing on the narrow edge of a 
precipice where descent was death ! An insane man paralyzed with terror 
and horror ! An insane man frozen suddenly into a marble statue, stand- 
ing between the perpendicular rock behind, and the deep, whirling abyss 
below ! 
I returned to him, and as I was approaching him — 

The marble statue melted ; not so far as to recede from the danger ! 
O, no ; the marble statue melted, only so far as to say : 

"For God's sake let me aloue — let me alone ; I am horror-stricken"! 

"What would you have done in such a case as that, if you really believed 
an insane man was in a position of such imminent peril ! Would you not 
have gone and offered him the aid of a helping hand and a strong arm, 
and guided him up those steps, and relieved him from a danger so appall- 
ing ? What did this man North do, according to his own account ? 

I let him alone, and returned after my guide, and was gone from five to ten minutes 
behind the tremendous waterfall ; and then we came out and found Mr. Guiteau in the 
same position and attitude still. 

He had traveled beneath the entire vortex of the fall of Niagara ; 
he had left an old man, his benefactor, whom he pretended to revere. 
frozen into a marble statue, and all that time Luther W. Guiteau did 
what would have been impossible for any other man, sane or insane, 
and stood in the same theatrical attitude, with both hands extended over 
that green and boiling abyss. North tells you he finally returned and found 
him in the same position and attitudt still. 

We hurried to him. 

That was pretty deliberate hurrying, was it not ? Some ten minutes, 
he says, had elapsed. The colored guide had more humanity, supposing 
the man to be sane. They reached the old man. 



71 

We hurried to him and cadi one took him by the arm and helped him back to the, 
building, \\ h< r.e we dressed. Be Beemed to be overcome mentally. 

Thai is where Charles got that disease of the brain, that left him the 
hour after he shot President Garfield 

and he seemed physicially partially helpless. We took off his oil-cloth wrappings, took 
our carriage, and went to the Clifton House, and there we took three things— a bath, 

a dinner, and a rest. 

Afterwards he mentions the fourth thing — a game of ten-pins a1 the 
bowling-alley. This is the evidence that Luther \Y. Guiteau was an in- 
sane man. But North improves on Amerling. There is one more proof of 
insanit y. 

Q State if ymi ever heard Mi'. Guiteau express any sentiment akin to those which 
require the slaying <>j' mi individual, the taking of a human life ; if so, what ': 

This question was very tenderly pul by .Mi'. Scoville; for all this pretense 
of insanity, excepl as connected with the idea of the direct command of 
God, has been tin- meresl sham, li was intended to give color w the part 
which the accused himself was to play, claiming to We under an inspiration 
of God. Fou have doubtless observed that Guiteau played as steadily 
into Mr. Scoville's hand-, as .Mr. Scoville has played into those of the 
prisoner, and both have been at great pains to lead you to suppose they 
have two different (In <>ri> s of the ease. North -ays : 

A. At an evening meeting of the circle, as it is called, a religious so -ial circle, there 
was an elderly gentleman and his wi at. They had been investigating 

views and these doctrines somewhat, but they said they had one serious family diffi- 
culty to overcome before they could join, and that that difficulty was, that they had a 

SOlifrom twenty to twenty five years old, who was violently opposed to their action in 
the premises, and it was the source Ot a meal deal Of annoyance and a great deal of 

trouble to them. They went on and told their story — how their son treated them; how 
he talked to them— Mr. Guiteau all the time sitting there— rather leaning over in a 

tative mood. At last, alter they had asked the views Of others, lie jumped to his 

tad broke out, " I will tell you what to do ; take a knift and slay him, as Abraham 

diil /.st/<t<\" 

Tnis is North's improvement onAmerling. Amerling did nol venture to 
(Hit in tin knife, lie was equal to the sacrifice, but not to the Abraham, 
This old gentleman, it seems had a tendency to homicidal insanity, which 

tic prisoner inherited, and the father's propensitj to shed blood Was to he 

the prisoner's sufficient defense for deliberate and premeditated murder ! 
Gentlemen, there is one thing you will not fail to observe. This old man 
had thoroughly studied the Bible. He believed in it, ami read it from 
day to day in his household, lie reverenced it as the hook of God, though 
he ingrafted upon it the speculative and unsound doctrines of the Oneida 
I lommunity. Do you believe that this intelligent and God-fearing old man 
did not know what every child know-, that Abraham did nol kill Isaac? 

"Take a knife ami slay him, as Abraham did Isaac!" Do you credit this 



:;- 

foolish fabrication? Would it not take a thousand Norths, to make you 
believe that this calm, thoughtful religious old man, did really say to a 
father and mother, who had an only eon, who did not wish to join the 
Oneida Community. 

" Take a knife and slay him as Abraham did Isaac." 

The Court then adjourned. 

Wednesday, January '25, 1882. 
The Court met at 1 o o'clock. 

Counsel for government and accused being present. 

The Prisoner. My sister has "been doing some silly talk in Chicago 
She means well, hut she is no lawyer. 

Mr. Porter. May it please the Court : Gentleman of the jury : 1 
have reached a portion of the argument in which the path is wearisome 
to me and will be still more so to you. Yet we are compelled to 
traverse it together. It is inevitable that there should be a dry presenta- 
tion of evidence, bearing on the more material points, which tend to the 
exposure of the animus of the prisoner. I mean — and simply because I 
have entire confidence in you — to make it as brief as possible, to condense 
the few salient points of two month's of evidence within the limit of a few 
hours. If it be possible, I shall not even delay you one day more. My 
purpose had been otherwise, but admonished by this falling snow, by the 
changes of the season, from winch I have suffered perhaps even more than 
you, I feel that it is <>f paramount importance that this trial should come 
to an end. If I pass hastily over 'some of the topics which ought to be 
considered, and which, if I had more time and strength, 1 should consider 
at large, it is because I rely upon your recollection of the evidence, and feel 
a strong assurance that you will supply any defects of mine, and penetrate 
to the inward truth and heart of the case. But I must, in view of the 
strange misrepresentations w f hich may perchance have found a temporary 
lodgment in some juror's mind, refer, at least in skeleton form, to some 
considerations which are really controlling. 

Yesterday I dropped the testimony of Thomas North, who obviously 
came here to aid the defense, by fixing upon his benefactor, Luther 
W. Guiteau, a vicai'ious responsibility for this murder, by transmitting 
his own tainted blood to the son. He left the stand, having planted, how- 
ever, a quivering barb in the heart of the prisoner, when he swore to the 
cowardly attack on his father. You certainly will have no difficulty in 
reaching the conclusion that if the son is innocent now, he was guilty 
then, and that he was animated by a most wicked spirit, when he struck 
his unarmed father at a disadvantage, and foughl him with the malice of a 
vicious and malignant fiend. That alone furnishes the evidence of a tur- 
bulent and unruly passion and egotism, which foreshadowed wrath and 



7G 

hate to all mankind. In his intense selfishness he Lifted his hand againsl 
bis only living parent, and engaged in an ignominious fighl with his 
own father, from which he retreated with the quelled cowardice of a 
bully, as he afterwards evinced the like spirit by shooting the Presi- 
denl in the back. The miserable craven fired al him, as be -truck his 
father, from behind. 

I oughl to refer, gentlemen, to the testimony of John W. Guiteau. iTou 
have seen the assassin heir mi exhibition, as an actor, in a part, which he 

ser sly thought would baffle the prosecution, and Bave him from the halter. 

But yon now Bee him — as his lather saw him, as his brother saw him, as his 
bi iter saw him, and came near j'< < ling him and his ax. I refer to this one 
point of the testimony, in order thai you may he reminded, in the very 
words o| the witness, of the circumstances which, when the assassin was 

fort) year- of age, when he had fired al Garfield, when Garfield was dead. 

led even his own brother, from his antecedent knowledgt oj his character, 
'" say he was sane and responsible. All that has since changed his 
opinion, was the admirable acting of the prisoner in his cell, ami the trans- 
mission from Chicago of an old letter from his father, which he and Ids 
counsel regard as evidence of insanity, but which I regard, as I have no 
doubt you will, as evidence of the son's diabolical wickedness and de- 
pravity. 

This brother, as yon rememher, is a witness, who has stood hy him with 
the fidelity of more than a brother; who was willing to come here, and to 
contribute, from his somewhal Limited means, all that he could to sa^ e this 
man's life. Fet this is the truth which he is com pel led to disclose he fore you. 
I may frankly say that I believe John W. Guitean to he an honest man. 
He feels naturally the bias which inclines one to save a brother's life, and 
to shield his own honored father's bonesl name, from the infamy which 
attaches to murder. Bui he is an upright man, and though his opinions 
under the circumstances would lie no safe guide t-> you, the fact- he 
state- are indelible. You might jusl a- well attempt to uproot the oak. 
a- to uproot the conviction which this testimony must carry to your 
minds that, however il might have been on the second of July, prior to 
that </tit' , he was no more insane than you or the judge, or me or his 
counsel. This ineffaceable fad is one which speaks to the conscience of 
everj human being. Was his acl one of depravity, wickedness, selfish- 
ness? I )o you nally think it sprung from a disease of the brain, curable 
in an hour hy an act of murder. The witness Bays : 

Be called at my offl ie. 

This was in L879. If I remember right, nol three years ago not two 
\ ears before t his murder. 

Be called al my office; he had called, I think, <<i\rr before, subsequently to his 
having called at the house, and complained of me thai [had told certain parties that 



77 

he was worthless, and that they could not get his board hill, and that they had come 
to him and, I think, discharged him. I told him that I would not, of course, and had 
not, at any time, meddled with or interfered with him by any voluntary statements — 

Such a complaint was in perfect harmony with his past career. He had 
made voluntary statements to and of everyhody. He has made them here, 
to and of his honor, alternately the most fulsome flattery, and the most 
impious menaces. He has done the same with you. Through his counsel 
he has given impudent warnings to you, to whom he looks with confidence 
for acquittal, or, failing acquittal, disagreement. He has two tones to his 
voice ; he has two faces to present to the public. 

One of these is masked with the sanctity of the Pharisee, and the other 
exhibits the hideous aspect of the fiend that possesses him. To proceed 
with the testimony of the prisoner's brother : 

but that if any one came to me to make an inquiry about him I should simply tell the 
truth. He said I had no business to make any statements about him or his indebted- 
ness, and that I was not any better than he was ; that I was in debt also. 

As he told you from the dock : 
Jesus Christ struck back, and so do I. 

This is the pious and prayerful Christian. He struck back at Secretary 
Blaine, and asked President Garfield to remove him, under a menace, 
which was in due time fulfilled. He struck back at President Garfield, 
and, unfortunately for the nation, for the household, for the unhappy 
victim of his malice, for himself, lie struck home. But to proceed with 
the reading: This, as his brother knew, unfortunately Mas true, and "we 
had some strong talk. I told him that he ought not to go to any board- 
ing-house keeper and apply for board, without he told them or gave them 
to understand his exact condition." 

It horrified the elder son of Luther W. Guiteau, that another son and 
his own brother, should be living by swindling, on the prisoner's impu- 
dent theory that "the world owed him a living " — that he hadalineal and 
biblical right not to pay k his debts, because the Apostle Paul did not pay 
his — as foul and infamous a calumny as ever fell from the lips of man. 

Guiteau did not live, as we are told Paul, did, in his own hired house, 
and while there were so many bitterly hostile to Paul, no human being ex- 
cept the assassin of President Garfield, has charged that the Apostle 
did not pay his rent. His brother proceeded: 

1 spoke very kindly to him, and he to me in the early part of the conversation. 

So he has spoken very kindly to his honor, and kindly to you in the 
early stages of this trial. But does either of you doubt, that when the 
sentence of the law, upon your verdict, comes to be pronounced, you will 
hear again and again the same language of blasphemous menace, the 
same expressions of malignant hate, and that you will know, that if he 



7^ 

ha<l qow the pistol he aimed at Garfield in his hand, and Loaded with the 
same cartridges, he would, it' he dared, under the plea of insane immunity. 
send it li< inn- to either of you, it' he thoughl it would serve his purpose. 

i spoke very kindly to aim and be to me, in the early pari of the conversation. I 
told liim that, if hi was reaOy Jumest, as he claimed he was. 

Yi.u see how lii^ brother John spoke t" him, long before the murder of 
the President. Mr. Scoville would perhaps have said, " Why, Mr. Guiteau, 
we all know your inborn and vital piety, know how supple your knees 
are, and how they are exercised morning and evening with prayer to God, 
how gentle and kindly your nature is. how yon steadfastly imitate the di- 
vine Son of .Man, and scrupulously obey His commandment, to love others 
as you love yourself - ." [f Guiteau had really loved bis neighbor Gar- 
field as he h>ve<l himself, do you believe he would have murdered him ? 

The Peisonee. The people I owe are high-toned people. I didn't go 
around beating poor people. 

Mr. Poetek. (Continuing.) We have had some of them on the stand. 
Mr. Scoville would have said to him, No Guiteau was ever insincere. 
He would have told him with characteristic unction, as in effect he told 
,ni : I know you to be a man of simple-hearted and guileless truth, a 
man who never jokes, who is always mild and gentle, who is always prayer- 
ful, who always does his duty according to his pure and tender conscience, 
by all men. John W. Guiteau, who had known him from the time he 
came from his mother's womb, says to him in Boston : 

If you "/■/ really honest, as yon claim to !"•. in tin- publication of ycur honk, and iu 
your method of life, if you would go to people, and not in any way dec ive them. 

The Peisonee. (Interjecting.) I never deceived them. sir. 

Mr. Poetee. (Continuing) — 
mid were really meritorious — 

I change the third person to the firsl person in reading — 
you will find people very kind, even if you were unfortunate, and could hot always 
pay your board as you agreed to do. 

The Peisonee. (Interjecting.) That isright,pu1 that in. 

Mr. Poetee. There is tin' interior of the vile life of the prisoner. These 
are words spoken in perfeei kindness and forbearance) by brother to 
brother, by a brother proud of and doing personal honor to his father's 
,,anie : bj a brother w ho did. as the prisoner did not. remember his brighl 

and accomplished ther. She was a pure-minded and faithful wife, who 

was ne\ ei insane e\ en for an hour. 

Mr. PEISOS ik. That i- -<>. 

M,-. Poetee. That is the firsl tribute he has paid to the mother who 

nursed him, and who loved him Keller than he deserved. 

The prisoner has introduced in evidence a hand-bill of one of his traveling 



79 

Lectures. Remember, this is this man who never deceived anybody, and 
who was furnishing his own recommendation of himself , and his lectures. 
This is in Boston : 

By the Hon. Charles Guiteau 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is the way my letters come now al- 
ways, sir. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) When did he become honorable? 
The UtHe giant of tfu West. 

When did this strolling humbug become " The little giant of the West ? " 
Was there ever a more impudent charlatan ? 

I pass this shallow pretense with no word of comment. AY as he the 
little giant lecturer, I ask you ? Was he not a cheat, a dead beat, and an 
impostor. He knows the falsehood of his impudent pretense, that the Al- 
mighty had selected him as the successor of Paul, and as a junior mem- 
ber of the firm of Jesus Christ & Company, to write a book, which should 
be an inspired sequel to the Bible, and to illustrate the golden rule, by ly- 
ing in wait, in parks and alleys, and churches, and railway depots, to mur- 
der a President, who would not appoint him to a place, for which he had no 
qualification except strange cunning and audacity. 

You remember, gentlemen, that when the prisoner was arrested in 
Michigan by an officer, under a law which existed in that State, by which 
a party coming to a boarding-place, and not paying his board, was pre- 
sumptively guilty of fraud and subject to arrest, he very naturally de- 
nounced the law of Michigan as a monstrous innovation. He went in the 
custody of the officer, until he came to the first stopping place, at which 
the officer fell asleep, and then he quietly and ignominiously slipped out 
the car, and walked the other way twelve miles at night, and made his 
trail forthwith to Ohio, a State where there was no such law ; and there 
he made his contracts, with the printers and with the proprietors of a public 
hall, and was really introduced by the favor of some special interposition 
of Providence, by a gentleman whose name we do not learn, to an" unmar- 
ried lady who desired boarders — a high-toned boarding-house, of course — 
where he for the time lived cheap and well, but he was disgusted with the 
audience he found there, and was actually reduced to what he could get, 
by peddling his stolen book at fifty cents a copy 

The PRISONER. (Interjecting excitedly.) That is the way the Lord 
wanted me to do it. and I hail no alternative about it. That is the way 
Paul got his living. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) dust listen. That was the work of the 
Lnnl. The Lord murdered Garfield : Guiteau had no hand in it. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting excitedly.) Yes; and he will murder you. 



80 

.Mr. Pobter. (Continuing.) And the Lord, through this apostle, Guiteau, 
as he would have you believe, defrauded the landladies and the innkeep- 
ers. The Lord, as he would have you think, deceived the printers; the 
Lord, i" whom everj day before he eats, he kneels in prayer, and thanks 
him for his good living :it other people's expense. 

The Prison] b. I never deceived anybody aboul my board bill. 

The Witness. He said at that time he did not. Iain comingto that point now. 
He said at that time, thai h, did just as Jews <'lni*t did. He said thai Jesus Christ 
went to a bouse, and if they received Him Hi- blessed them, if nol He cursed them. 

Ami lie did jusl the same way. 

That he was working I'm- Qod, and he considered— 

How convenient — 
he considered that Qod idi* responsible, if he could not pay his hoard, and not him. 

So when lie deliberately murdered President Garfield. First, it is Blaine 
who is responsible; second, it is Garfield himself, who is responsible- and 

for this /" dies : third, it is the Stalwarts of New York who arc respon- 
sible ; fourth, it is the Half-Breeds of New York who are responsible, for 
tiny misled him : fifth, it i> the Democratic press and the Stalwart press 
that arc responsible, for they wrought out the situation ; sixth, it is the 
rebels, though, so far as I know, they an not in rebellion. Except by 
achievements in the field of war, which have given honorable distinction 
to men on both sides, we do not know to-day who were rebels and who 
were loyalists. He thought he could kindle to new life old sectional bit- 
terness. In his, to yon, closing speech, he quoted the words of a popular 
song, without a thought of tin utter contempt which a man Ufa John 
Brown would havi felt for him. He gravely insists that this vile murder 
was a patriotic act ; and only when he finds that all men of all parties 
loathe and scorn him, with a loathing and scorn absolutely unutterable, it 
is only then, that he falls hack upon his own old resource — hi- vital piety. 
liu read from his brother's evidence : 

Then we had some further conversation and I drove him to the wall, as I always did 
in conversation ; thai is, I rather attacked him ; I did attack him. I entertained the 

Bame opinion of him, a- he says that my father did, and I drove him to the wall. Then 
hi- spiril of antagonism would come up, and lie would attempt to ill ive me to the wall, 
it I was not better than hi', because I was in debt. 
After awhile he usually intimated that he was ajighting /• 

He has told you how eminently brave he was. The only evidence of 

that, from the beginning, is thai which is furnished by his brother, and 

this In denies. Bluster has been his prominent characteristic from the 

tning. Fighting, never, unless he could fight from behind, and, like 

an Indian, avail himself of the advantage of an ambush. 

[ told him thai I was not, and il would be better for us to discontinue our interview, 

and at the time referred t,,, I told him that I tilOUghl he had '■< tU r leave, and got his hat 
for him and showed him In tin door. He was passing ahead of me, an I he >aid, as he 

went along that 1 wa and a scoundrel." 



81 

Human nature at the best is very weak. Even John W. Guiteau, wlio 
probably never struck a man before in his life, when that wanton charge 
was made — that, charge which from the dock, the prisoner now admits to 
have been utterly false — before he could control the indignation which is 
instinctive in an honest man, slapped him on the face. 

Mr. Scovili.k. (Interposing.) Judge, he says he slapped him on the 

back of t/" ii' ''/,'. 

Mr. Porter. (Repeating.) I accept the amendment, though it does not 
accord with my memory. He slapped him on the back <>f tin neck. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) He didn't hit me at all. 

Mr. Porter. Well, the prisoner and Mr. Scoville don't altogether agree. 
Mr. Scoville says he did, and that he struck him on the back of the neck. 
Mr. Scovili.k. I am merely reading from the testimony. 

Mr. Porter. Of course ; the testimony has some significance to you 
and me, although it has none to the prisoner. 

I then slapped him about as hard as that — 
on the back of the neck, and he turned, and gave me one on the side of the face, which 
I very much respected him for. I did not -suppose he had so much pluck. 

The Prisoner That is not so. 

The Witness. I took him by the collar. This was in the office of the New York 
Life Insurance Company. I took him by the collar very forcibly. 

I think either of you, gentlemen, would have put some force of grasp 
upon the collar of a man, who came to your office and told you impudently 
and falsely, as he knew, that you were <i thief 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I told him the truth, and I will prove it 
by the record, if it is necessary. Now, the point of all this kind of talk is 
to prove that I am a man of terrible bad temper. 

Mr. Pobtek. (Continuing.) What a pity, gentlemen, he has not your 
record. He claims to have everybody's record, and in every instance 
in which we have an opportunity to test it, it turns out to be a lying 
record. 
I took him by the collar very forcibly and heartily, and tlin </• Mm down stairs. 

As the coward went tumbling down thost stairs, the spirit of tight 
oozed out of him. 

There they stand, oath /<> oath, the elder and the second son of Luther 
W. Guiteau. The younger son says, that the elder is a liar and a perjurer. 
The elder says that he has uttered, even though it is against the lite of his 
brother, whom he is seeking to defend, the simple and the naked truth. 
Which ofthesi m< n <ln you beliem f 

I need not refer you farther to the evidence, because you evidently 
remember it. No one will deny, that down to Octjber, when John W. 



82 

Guiteau received his father's old bul ver$ Bignificanl letter, John W. Guiteau 
was firmly convinced thai the prisoner had given himself over to the 
devil. This is a plain statement, founded upon the authority of his 
hrothi r's oath. 

Tin' Prisoner. (Interjecting.) He is no brother to me. He has not 
been. We haven't been on speaking terms for years. 

Mi. Porter. (Continuing.) It would have been better for him, if he had 
never been on Bpeaking terms with his elder brother. He says : 

/ was not on speaking terms with my father, for the last fifteen years on account of 
thai stinking Oneida Community. 

If Luther W. Guiteau were a competent juror, if he were living, what 
would he Bay? You see how he condemned this wretched son For his 
attempt to blackmail the Oneida Community, by instituting a disgraceful 

and dishonest suit after he had given them a receipt iu full of all demands, 
when all he claims, even now, is that he put in $900, of which lie obtained 
full restitUt ion. This old letter of his father, which 1 hey exhume, and which 
led John W. Guiteau, from a casual expression here, to think that after 
all he might have been mistaken, and perhaps this man was insane, -peaks 
with eloquence and force. Iii enjoining upon .Mrs. Scoville the necessity 
of thai course which had led him to thrift, and a departure from which led 
his children, Fanny and Charles, to poverty, he says : 

This thing of running in debt, especially for daily expenses, i< an outrage, and one 
of the great causes of hard times. 

Do von remember when this was written — October 31, 1875, only Beven 

year- ago — 

ami much of the fraud- and dishonesty, thai are constantly practised by many very 
well disposed, bul unthinking sort of folks. It has been one of my own serious faults. 

Referring, unquestionably, to an earlier period, when he was compelled to 
suspend his business ns a Freeporl merchant, though he afterwards honor- 
ably :idjusted every outstanding debt, a trait which does not seem to have 
been " hi r< ditary." 

Ii ha- been one of my own serious faults ; h is the ruin of Wilson, of Geurgc, to say 
nothing of < lharles. 

For he tells you that George (Scoville) owed $100,000. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) If Scoville was smart, he wouldn't have 

put that httcr in evidence. It shows what a blockhead he is. 

Mr. 1\.i:i er. (Continuing :) 

By the way, Charles lias been here lor several day- pasl ; came a week ago yester- 
day, and remained until Thursday morning, when he took the cars to Chicago. 

Gentlemen, 1 thought from the prisoner's statement, that f or fifteen 

year's they had not been even <>n speaking terms. 



83 

He came out here, as it appears from Iris story, thinking that through and with my 
aid, he could get Mr. Adams to loan him $35,000 to help to buy up the Inter-Ocean 
newspaper, expecting, as lie mys, to get the same amount of Charles B. Farewell ; also 
the same amount of a friend who lives in New York, and the same amount of Potter 
Palmer, making $100,000. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Yes, I knew all those felloes ,- they were 
good men. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) You can judge from these intelligent inter- 
jections, whether he is sane or insane. 

He went away very much disgusted with me, because I would not discount his note 
at the bank for $300. To my mind he is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, and if I 
had the means to keep him I would send him to one. for a time at least. 

Gentlemen, I am not surprised at all, that Luther W. Guiteau felt thus 
about that Inter-Ocean project. To him it seemed almost insane. Mr. 
Scoville says now it was really insane. But he lias called, and we have 
called witnesses, who prove, that instead of being insane, it was one of 
the keenest and most brilliant conceptions of this man's life ; and that 
if he had succeded in drawing his father and friends, who had no faith 
in his integrity, into that project, with the arrangements then proposed, 
and afterwards carried out with Mr. Bennett of the New York Herald, the 
leading independent newspaper not only in this country, but in the world 
to-day, it would have been a magnificent success. I speak of the Xew 
Y'ork Herald, simply because the English have taken pains to deride his 
honor, and the government, and all connected with tins trial, for dallying 
with the prisoner, and 'not hanging him, as they recently hung a conspicu- 
ous criminal, within a month after the act of murder. Gentlemen, when 
England or her leading journals claim that we cannot administer justice in 
America ; that we cannot, in the fair and orderly course of justice, convict 
an assassin, they belie the Court and you. Our practice is to ascertain 
guilt, before we />>/tn's7i it. 

Mr. Ree». (Interposing.) If the Court please, I object to that state- 
ment of Judge Porter. 

Mr. Porter. I will say nothing more on this topic, if it is disagreeable 

to my friend. I had supposed thai no man, not even the junior counsel 
for the prisoner, would be unwilling, that the honor of his country should 
be upheld against foreign libels; but if it is otherwise, if this patriotic 
prisoner and his counsel are not willing t<> hear his country vindicated, it 
will be more effectually vindicated from the jury-box. 

Mr. Reed. If the Court please, again I object to Judge Porter's making 
these statements. 

The District Attorney. Mr. Reed can make an exception, and Judge 
Porter can go on. 

The Court. I do not see that there is anything particular to object to. 



84 

Mr. Reed. What I object to, your honor, is this statement of what 
English papers say concerning this trial. I submit that that is improper. 

The Court. It is not particularly injurious, and it is not particularly 
relevant. 

Mr. Portek. Suppose it -were irrelevant, does any man imagine that I 
have not the right in argument, to use those matters of general publicity, 
which are known to all Christendom? Have I no right to vindicate the 
honor of the presiding judge, against the penny-a-liners of Great Britain. 

But I am content to pass the subject, without comment, and I proceed 
to what is not only relevant, but pregnant with significance. 

This scheme, which the old gentleman thought was insane, was not only 

gane it was a singularly shrewd and sagacious conception. If it could 

have been carried out, and all that was wanting was confidence in his in- 
tegrity, this man instead of being in the prisoner's dock for crime, would 
have been a millionaire in Illinois, and he perfectly understands that fact. 
That scheme, in 'his hands, failed ; and, simply, because among the fifty 
millions of people in this country, he could not find one man who would 
trust him except his friend, Mr. Charles H. Reed, on whose certificate he 
was admitted to the bar, and he trusted him only to the extent of $25. A 
man in any matter involving financial credit, cannot, when he desires to 
get money, fall back on his mere fertility of brain, especially when he 
needs to borrow 875,000. The experience of the old gentleman, who 
knew the propensities of the prisoner better than we do, made him in- 
dignant that Charles should even ask him to trust him for 8200. The 
prisoner, however, seizes on this hasty expression : 

He ou^lit to be in a lunatic asylum, and if I could in justice to other claims upon 
my means and upon my family 1 would send him. 

On this impatient expression, when the letter came to the knowledge of 
John W. Guiteau, he came to the conclusion, that perhaps, after all, this 
man might have been insane, and he reconsidered his former settled opin- 
ion. You know, what John W. Guiteau and his father did not ; that the 
Inhr ocean project was a scheme of a strong, keen, and able man. The 
old gentleman goes on to say— and there you get into the interior of his 
heart : 

His condition in my judgment has been caused by an unsubdued 

Compare this, with what Mr. lived told you of the homicide. A pure, 
a good, a moral, prayerful, and Christian man, until he went to the 
Omida Community; and he calls it, with strange effrontery, an undisputed 
fact though not established by the oath of even a single witness. His 
sister declares him to have been turbulent in childhood. His father pun- 
ished him as, in his judgment, willfully perverse, at the age of five or six 
years. 



85 

It appears that when lie was seventeen or eighteen, he took offense at 
his father, who had given him a place in his clerk's office. He struck his 
lather, with the same hand that butchered the President, and he fought 
him after the blow was struck. He cringed and blubbered like a calf, 
when his father by a well-planted blow drew blood from his nose. It 
appears, too, that this filial boy, at a much earlier age, took bitter offense 
at his father, because h% had not asked his permission to marry, after along 
period of widowhood. This lordly young gentleman took such umbrage 
at the undutiful conduct of the old gentleman, that when the father started 
in one direction with his wife, and left a message for his son, he started in 
another direction, not exactly as a deadhead, but running his father in 
debt for the money to take him to Chicago, to remain until his boasted 
piety should reconcile him, to this flagrant parental disobedience of his 
amiable and filial boy. 

The Prisoxer. (Interjecting.) I was twelve years old at the time, and 
I went back to my sister's house in Chicago. The conductor knew me, 
and deadheaded me. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Here we get a glimpse of the record, which 
could have been given you perhaps by Mr. Scoville, if he had been sworn, 
and perhaps not, but certainly by his sister Flora, certainly by hit* step- 
mother. Mr. Scoville was not living there it is true ; but Flora was, and 
the step-mother was. The history of those earlier years, preceding his 
going to the Oneida Community, they knew. The only material evidence 
we have upon that point, other than this letter, is Mrs. Scoville's, which is 
all discreditable to him, except the single fact that he was affectionate to 
her when she took care of him as a boy. 

To proceed with his father's letter : 

His condition, in my judgment, has been caused by an unsubdued icill — 

And that he underscores — 
tlie very spirit of disobedience to authority. 

A disobedient boy, a "turbulent" boy as his sister admits ; a boy who 
reversed the commandment and said, "Parents, honor and obey your 
children." 

The very spirit of disobedience to authority and rule toward me. 

You remember that he lived for most of the time with his father, until 
he went to Oneida, and what he speaks of here, is his conduct in the very 
years during which Mr. Reed presents him to you as a model of morality. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Well, I was. I was a model of morality 
at that time, sir. 

Mr. Porter. *S'o Mr. Ree<J thinks. 

He tells you, he was obedient to the command of God in committing 
this murder. His father goes on to say : 

Disobedient to God. 



86 

He says himself — f or Ju is always indorsing hiniself and Mr. ScoviUe, 
except when he has occasion to think that Mr. ScoviUe is on the wrong 
tack, and then a well-prepared scene is got up, in which Mr. ScoviUe is 
denounced. He, of course, receives it meekly, with a look of mute appeal 
to the jury, as much as to say, " Don't you see how crazy that poor fellow 
is; he is denouncing even me?" 

The very spirit of disobedience to authority and rule toward me, disobedience to God 
and the spirit <>/ truth. 

A liar from the beginning : and on whose authority, I presume, Mr. 
ScoviUe made his harsh and bitter assault on Mr. Edwards, a gentleman 
who has been for years, a trusted clerk and employee of one of the first law T 
firms in the country — the firm of Davies, Work & Company, in the city of 
New York — of which the late Lyman Tremaine was a member, after he 
ceased, to be attorney-general of New York — of which the head was the 
late Chief Justice Davies, who, during the progress of this trial, has closed 
a career of distinguished honor. 

Mr. Edwards, a respectable young gentleman, trusted by such a firm, 
brought here by judicial process, to testify to the fact, which he happened 
to know, that this prisoner had in his New York office expressed his desire 
for public notoriety, and his admiration of Wilkes Booth; had attempted 
to draw the witness into a swindling operation for the benefit of Guiteau : 
had heard his boast of the fraud he perpetrated upon the Jew pawnbroker 
in pledging for gold, a watch which was not of gold, and the sharp device 
by which he escaped pnnishment. This witness rouses the virulence of 
the prisoner; and Mr. ScoviUe, the indorser of Guiteau, rises in due time 
to towering eloquence, and denouces Mr. Edwards as a deliberate perjurer. 
The witness swore to facts, in respect of which Guiteau was a competent 
witness : but Mr. Scoville did not choose to recall him to the stand to contra- 
dict them. Mr. Shaw, a respectable member of the bar, had previously 
sworn to the same facts, but Mr. Scoville denounces him as a perjurer. On 
what authority ? The counsel seemed startled himself, at his bold charge of 
perjury, and so he proceeded to transform this witness into a Jew, 
without the slightest foundation for the allegation. Even if it had been 
true, I have yet to learn that it is a dishonor to any man, to he a country- 
man of the Redeemer of mankind, or of the lineage of that ancient people, 
80 distinguished in the history of our race. It is no discredit to be of 
the same race with Dayid, whose psalms we still sing in our churches; 
with Solomon, from whom we still learn wisdom ; or with Abraham, the 
progenitor of a more than royal lineage. 

The PfilSONEB. (Interjecting.) That is very fine, hut the Lord and the 
Jews had a Tailing out at the destruction of Jerusalem, and it has followed 
them ever since. Tht Jeics are very nict peoplt nowadays. 



-7 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Mr. Edwards is coolly transmuted into a 

Jew — by a lawyer, who did not ask hi- descent, and does not know where 
he was born — for the purposes of thi- case, and after the witness leaves, he 
quietly proceeds to circumcise him ; a rite, which I question the authority 
of Mr. Scoville to administer, certainly not in the presence of the court and 
the jury. Possibly he might have made a stronger case of insanity, if he 
had whispered in his client"- ear on that memorable fourth of July. "When 
you come to be tried for this crime, proceed to dt urself in the 

court-room, for you have a constitutional right to be confronted with the 
accusing witnesses." Gentlemen, hi has stripped himself to nudity, in a 
moral if not in a physical sense, as I shall show when I come to his evi- 
dence. Let as resume hi- father" s letter : 

Disobedience to authority and rule towards me, disobedience to God and the spirit 
of truth, which culminated in a quarrel with Mr. Noyea and the O. C. 

The Oneida Community. 

I do know — 

And that he underscored, and it is evidence before yon, introduced by 
the prisoner, and on the authority of bis own father : 

I do know lie has in all that matter, as well as his other acts of disobedience, been 
ated by Satan, and satanic forces ; and I warn whosoever it may concern, to beware 
how they yield themselves to the wicked one. 

There is the record of this man's insanity. I lay it down: as we would 
turn down and close a coffin lid. Gentlemen, when we come to the evi- 
dence of his living brother, when we come to that of his living -> 
express and specific to the point, that :die never Buspected him of being 
out of his right mind until 1876 : when we come t>> the evidence that 
there was a step-mother and a half-sister, whom he of course calumniates 
and traduces, and who of course are not here : when we produce the wife 
who lay -ide by side with him, when he would have you believe, he wa- a 
religious man kneeling by her bedside, though sfu does not testify that 
.<■//. ( ver saw it, and though, if it were true, he and his astute counsel would 
have been glad enough to prove it by her 

Air. Scoville. (Interposing.) If the Court please, I object to that. 
There is not a word of that in evidence. 

Mr. Porter. There is this in the case. If he had done so. and she 
knew it. he or his counsel would have asked her. when die was here upon 
the stand. 

Mr. Scoville. That is another thing. 

Mr. Porter. That i< the very thing. The record is here. We produced 
her as a witness. 

Mr. Scoville. I am on the floor, and I have the attention of the Court 
I want the record read. 



88 

Mr. Poster. I do nol consenl thai the record be read in the midsl of 
my argument. 

Mr. Scoville. I a^k that the reporter read the expression of Judge 
Porter. 

Mr. Poetee. The gentlemen may have the whole record read, if he 
chooses, <i/i< r the conclusion of my argument. 

The Distbn i A i roENEY. Lei him file his objection. 

The Couet. (To Counsel.) Suspend until we can see what the trou- 
ble is. 

Mr. Scoville. I ask the reporter to read thai expression. 

Mr. Poetee. I objed to that. I do not suppose the reporter is em- 
ployed l.\ the United States attorney, to occupy part of my time in Bum- 
ming up t his case. 

The Coi'KT. I want to see what was said. 

Mr. PoETEE. Oh, if it is for your honor's information, it is all right. 

Mr. Scoville. (to the reporter.) I wish you to read what .Indue l'orter 
said, about his not kneeling in prayer, as being in the evidence of his 
wife. 

The Repoetee. (Reading.) " When he professes to have been kneel- 
ing by her bedside, though she never saw it, or he would have been glad 
enough to prove it by her." 

Mr. Scoville. That is what I objected to. He says thai he professed 
to have been kneeling by her bedside and she never saw it. I say there is 
no such thing in evidence. 

Mr. Poetee. No, I did nol say that. 1 said, in substance, as the re- 
porter read, and as the jury heard, "He would have been glad enough to 
prove it h\ her." The counsel objected, and w< could nol examine her on 
this question. They could. 

The Couet. I understand that Judge Porter reaffirms now. that it is sim- 
ply an inference from your omission to prove the facts. 

Mr. PoETEE. I do not say anything d iff even 1 now, from what I did.be- 
fore. 1 do not, 1 confess, like the idea, your honor, of having it a»uined 
that I am wrong, when I know that I am right. 

The Couet. Whether it is in the evidence or not, is a question lor the 
jury. 

Mr. Scoville. I desire to have an exception. 

Mr. Poetee. Inasmuch as it is not alleged and proved as :[ fact, then' i- 

no ground lor t he except ion. 

The Couet. It is for the jury to deride, whether there is such evidence 
or not. 

Mr. Scoville. Will the Court permit me an exception ? 

Mr. POETEE. I object to the exception. lie can except to the rulings of 

the (Hurt, lie cannot except to my argument. 

The COUET. I d< t think there is any ground for an exception. 



89 

Mr. Porter. Xow, gentlemen, I have given you the substance of the 
family evidt nee. I stated to you, that the first question was, whether this 
man was insane ? If lie was not, that ends the ease. It is only an insane de- 
lusion, and that of a sufficient degree of force to obliterate for the time the 
sense of moral or legal right and wrong, as his honor will tell you, which 
can shield him from responsibility. If he was not insane, there you can 
Stop. I ought not perhaps to occupy much time with the other evidence, 
but I must call your attention to it. There are two witnesses, who are 
claimed as experts in this case, for the purpose of showing that this pris- 
oner is insane. One of them is a Dr. Kiernan, with whose face you have 
become very familiar, for I think he has been here from the earliest stage 
of the trial. He gives an introductory account of himself. He comes 
here as one experienced in diagnosing the insane. His experience cannot 
be large, for it is only eight years since he was tw T enty-one years of age. 
His chief dignity was, that he was for three years <m apothecary, dealing 
out medicines on the prescription of the physicians at Ward's Island. For 
a portion of that time he was assistant physician, and he was discharged, 
as he sw T ears, for one cause, and as Dr. Macdonald, the brilliant and able 
President of the asylum, swears for another. He tells you frankly, that 
he does not believe in a future state of existence. He thinks men are born 
insane; that there is but a very small portion of the insane, who are in 
lunatic asylums; that one-fifth of tin- people of this country are lunatics, 
ten mill i<m of them. In this proportion, two of you are insane, with a 
fair chance of a third, the chance being fractional. Whether the learned 
judge happens to belong to the four-fifths, or to the one-fifth, he was not 
kind enough to intimate, the other judges not being here. Whether I 
am of the unfortunate fifth, I do not know. I think the doctor, however, 
would have no difficulty in certifying me to a lunatic asylum, if he could 
be assured, that I really think the President was assassinated by the pris- 
oner, and not by my Stalwart friend, Colonel Corkhill. Guiteau, I 
presume, shares the feeling of the counsel, that the men who killed 
the President, are the men who are now prosecuting Guiteau, and that Mr. 
Davidge and I must have stood behind, with our hands in our hip-pockets, 
ready to shield the gallant marksman, after he had shot the President in 
the back. This witness evidently believes, that insanity is a condition, 
closely allied to idiocy or imbecility; that insanity consists in a tendency 
to visionary schemes which turn out to be unprofitable : in an inability to 
exercise as much good judgment as common men do; and he seems to think 
that if any man, having those peculiarities, a tendency to unprofitable 
schemes, and lacking the judgment of ordinary men, were brought to him, 
he would unhesitatingly give a certificate, which would consign him to a 
lunatic asylum. Well, gentlemen, that is the effect of this evidence so 
far. What more? lie had been here during most of this trial. He had 
seen the prisoner in court. I do not now remember whether he also saw 
him out of court. 



90 

The Distek i Attorney. He examined him in the jail. 

Mr. Porter. He examined him in the jail ; and even this man, who be- 
lieves that when he dies, it will be as tin dog dies, never to rise from the 
grave, and to be held to just responsibility for his acts or his words in this 
life ; even him, they dared not ask whether he believed from that examina- 
tion that Guiteau was insane 

Mr. S< oi ii i.k. I think you are mistaken in that. 

Mr. Porter. Well, I will gladly give way, while you turn to the testi- 
mony. It is possible I am mistaken, hut I looked over the voluminous 
evidence with some care, and failed to observe it. I wish you would find 
it. (After examining the record.) I do not see it, Mr. Scoville. I think 
you must be in error. Do you find it? If you do, it will give me great 
pleasure to OOrred the error, whieh, I think, you erroneously impute to me. 

Mr. Scovtlle. 1 refer to page 747. lie says that he would certainly 
write the case as one of hereditary insanity. 

Mr. Porter. Write what case ? 

Mr. Si ovii.i.k. This case. 

Mr. Porter. He is answering a question, as to his conclusions from 
iln statements of previous witnesses as to the supposed insanity of 
relatives. 

The District Attorney. The point was, that Judge Porter said, Mr. 
Scoville did not ask him the question as to the result of his own examina- 
tion of tin prisotn r. 

Mr. Porter. He put to this witness the hypothetical question. 

Mr. Scoville. (After further search.) I do not find it, Judge. It venj 
not l» In re. 

Mr. Davidge. I think you can assume that it is not there, Judge. 

Mr. Porter. I think it is not there, but I do not choose to have the 
matter Left in doubt. 

Mr. Davidg e. // is not there. 

Mr. Porter. So you see, gentlemen, you may leave tht results of his 
personal examination out of the case, as his own counsel chose to do. 

Now we come to Dr. Spitzka, of whom 1 intend to say nothing unkind. 
I do not need to do so,if I were otherwise so disposed, as I am not; for he 
is the friend of a valued friend of mine. If he can stand on this record, 
before any intelligent man who reads it, let him stand. Jlis acquaintance 
with this prisoner began, I think, on a Friday or a Saturday. It lasted 
until .Monday, when he gave his evidence. 

Mr. Davidge. And Baw him on Sunday at the jail. 

Mr. Porter. That was his introduction and his parting, with the homi- 
cide, who shot President Garfield. You have lived with Guiteau, day by 
day, for two months and a half. You know him a little better than Dr. 



91 

Spitzka does. Well, the doctor tells you, what honors have been heaped 
upon him, honors without number, the principal one of which was that he 
once wrote a prize essay, and that he is a professor. You remember of 
what tort of a college, and what sort ofaprofessorship. He Bays: 

The result of my examination was that 1 found this man insane. 

And a little below: 

A moral imbecile. 

Not an intellectual imbecile; a moral imbecile. I wonder if Lucifer 
happened to be on trial, what Dr. Spitzka would say of him. Would he 
call him, too, a moral imbecile, a moral monstrosity ? Satan fell, if we 
may believe the record of inspiration, from the empyrean heights, and 
sunk to the depths, whence come those temptations which haunt man, 
and curse him, and doom him to punishment here and hereafter. But 
there was a change in Satan. Dr. Spitzka thinks there never was a 
change in this homicide. He was a moral imbecile, that is, wicked and 
depraved, from the beginning. Certainly he was not a fiend, befort he 
could tall-. Mr. Reed tells you that he had to be sent to school to learn 
to talk. 

A moral imbecile, or rather a moral monstrosity. 
I read from the record : 

Mr. Davidge. See if I get it down right. First, a tendency to insane delusion — 
Not an insane delusion, but a tendency to it. 
to the formation of delusive opinions — 

Is there one man here who has not formed delusive opinions, even dur- 
ing the progress- of this trial? When you heard Mr. Scoville open this 
case, did you not form opinions which have since proved to you a perfect 
delusion ? 

of morbid projects. 

Why is the greater part of mankind poor? Because of morbid pro- 
jects. Are the greater part of mankind really insane ': 

I should perhaps say. that the prisoner, whom I examined in j^our presence, has been 
in a more or less morbid state throughout his life, for nothing can be more intensely 
morbid than <i precocious and ever-growing proclivity to wickedness. 

Well, if he means a moral monstrosity, I think he makes the insanity 
too long, for I cannot conceive that a human being can become "a moral 
monstrosity" until he knows the difference between right and wrong, which 
most children do not know when they come — toothless in, J baldheaded 
into the world. 

Of course, you remember, the burden is upon the homicide to prove bis 
insanity. 



92 

On Dr. Spitzka's evidence, it is seriously insisted that the prisoner was 
probably insane on the 2d of July. 

Are you prepared to find a verdict that ha was probably insane, when the 
law, as expounded by the Court, requires that unless you honestly believe 
him to have been then insant it is your duty to convict him; and even if 
you should be led by the evidence to that conclusion, you must go to the 
further question of the actual degree of insanity. Dr. Spitzka was never 
in charge of any lunatic asylum. lie has tried three times to obtain such 
a situation, and has failed three times, notwithstanding his prize essay, 
which I do not doubt was creditable to him, as a young and somewhat in- 
experienced theorist. I hope he may have better success hereafter. He 
formed an opinion, from an examination of the prisoner. lie told you 
what the examination was, and the result is, that, in the opinion of Dr. 
Spitzka, he was probably insane. I do not think you will concur with him 
in that somewhat crude opinion. But it turns out, that before he ever saw 
the man, he had already a fixed opinion that he was insane, formed on 
newspaper statements. It was already fixed and definite. That was in 
the month of October, in which I landed from Europe, and having very 
little acquaintance with this department of psychological investigation, 
and being referred by a valued and eminent personal friend, to his friend 
Dr. Spitzka, as a young gentleman of professional skill and honor, and as a 
proper person to send on, in order to ascertain the actual mental condition 
of this prisoner, and having been already notified that I should send some 
one to make this investigation, I called on Dr. Spitzka, to know if he 
would undertake that task. I had never before that day seen or heard of 
tin man. Do you think anybody would call him now, in any honest case? 
T saw him once then, and I have seen him here. 

Let me read from his testimony : 

Q. You say you examined the shape of his head ? A. I did. Then I said to him, 
" I will have to know a little more about the psychology of your crime." 

And to ascertain that he passed his hand over his head. 

I found that he had the legal attainments, as far asl have a right to pass upon them 
of a third-rate shyster of a criminal court. 

.Mr. Scoville can tell you what that is; I cannot. 

If you were to ask me whether he knew the legal consequences of acts, I should say 
without any hesitation, that at least since he has been a lawyer, he has always known 
the legal consequence of criminal nets 

The Prisoner. That is <>>,< of Scoville' 's bright witnesses. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing to read:) 

I became convinced in my examinations of him, that the crime, for which the man 
stands indicted, was the result of a morbid proji ct ratTu r than of </ dt lusion, strictly speak- 
ing. Delusive opinion entered into this crime. 



93 

Gentlemen, what do you think of announcing to the community, that if 
a man chooses to murder a lady, or a child, or an old man, and has a de- 
fense of not guilty interposed, and Dr. Spitzka is then called to examine 
the prisoner, and, testifying in behalf of the murderer, claims that the 
crime was the result of a morbid project, rather than a delusion, would you 
turn the man loose to murder other old men, other ladies, and other chil- 
dren; to tire houses, to forge hills of exchange and bank-notes; to commit 
midnight burglary, to stand with a pistol over the head of your wife, while 
the thief rifles your pocket, or carries off your pantaloons. 

Mr. Davidge asks Dr. Spitzka this very pertinent and incisive question: 

You concluded, then, that the shooting of the President was not the result of any in- 
sane delusion, hut rather of a tendency of the mind of the prisoner to the formation of 
morbid projects? — A. Yes, that is the maiu motor in the case. I did not use the ex- 
pression moral insanity, but some authors call that moral insanity winch I term moral 
imbecility or moral monstrosity. 

Q. You concluded that he was born a crippU in respect i<> moral senst .' 

A. That is about the amount of it ; correct. 

Q. Well, now about his head. 

You have seen the head in the plaster cast. You have seen it in the 
dock, as it was shaped by a power greater than that of the plasterer. 

The defective innovation of the facial muscles, a symmetry of the face, and pro- 
nounced deviatiou of tongue to the left. 

You notice, gentlemen, that the deviation of the tongue was, during the 
progress of this trial, and that it has constantly been, to the left, in tfu di- 
rection of the jury. 
Q. Well, what i:Ort of a head is it ? — A. That is what we term a rhombo-cephalic. 

I wonder what the doctor would think of a vicious and kicking horse ; 
for he has pre-eminently, a rhombo-cephalic head. The owner proposes to 
thrash the horse, and to pass a rope over his back, to hold him down, or 
set him kicking at an elastic ball swinging behind him, until he is absolutely 
tired of kicking at anything. "Don't do that," says a surgeon, of the Dr. 
Spitzka school, "don't do that ; this horse has a rhombo-cephalic head. It 
is a case of moral monstrosity, otherwise called moral insanity. Treat the 
horse gently; nurse him and pet him ; don't punish him; don't shoot him." 
" You would not," to use the language of my friend Mr. Keed, "you would 
not certainly shoot 'a poor, harmless, and lunatic* horse." 

There is beyond all doubt, a typical symmetry. No person's head in this room is 
probably exactly correspondent with any other. I am speaking now of the ideal halves 
of this rogue's head, not the actual mathematical halves of our own heads, which are 
never exactly equal. 

Q. lloir many heads have you examined in reference to the increase of one side over 
the other ? — A. Probably mort than << thousand. 

What a busy life this young doctor has led. Just think of his examining 
over one thousand heads in order to arrive at the degree of deviation. He 



94 

ought to have a prize for that very unprecedented feat. But now he puts 
in evidence something, that is really a little pertinent. It answers the odd 
question of Mr. Reed. Mr. Reed tells you that you are really twelve em- 
perors, and seems to think that if one of you will, in despite of the evi- 
dence and the opinion of your fellows, set up a doubt, founded on the un- 
proved assumption that Guiteau has a diseased brain, and that he is really 
and truly insane, and that he was so on the 2d of July, you can, at least, 
obstruct the course of justice, and add two months more to the life of this 
cowardly homicide, by postponing the final conviction to that extent. I 
am sorry to say that even Dr. Spitzka does not agree with him. 

If I had only that man's face to guide me, I would say that he might be a very de- 
praved man or a moral monster, I would not know which. 

That Includes the lop-sided smile ; that includes his well-playi d wild eye. 
When Mr. Reed told you, that you could judge better, than those who are 
experienced in dealing with lunatics ; that your judgment ought to over- 
ride the undisputed evidence; that you, upon your own view, could decide 
whether a person was really insane, he gave a very curious illustration of 
a great historical truth. The world had lived, since the era of the French 
revolution, in profound ignorance of the fact, that the beautiful and bril- 
liant Charlotte Corday was insane. 

It was left for Mr. Reed, to announce the fact to this jury and 
this Court, for the first time in the world's history, that this splendid 
girl was insane. She cannot turn in her grave, but there are some of - 
us yet alive, who know the bloody but radiant history of that extraordinary 
peasant girl, who, in her -youth and beauty, consummated an assassination 
which was more than just. 

The Prisoner. You would have hung her if you had been there. 

Mr. Porter. Never ! She was one of the noblesse created by the God, 
whose name this prisoner blasphemes. She was no cringing coward. She left 
the humble house in which she was reared, to liberate France; to stay the 
hand of revolutionary slaughter, to lay her own head, as a cheerful and joyous 
offering beneath the guillotine, in order to save the effusion of blood among 
those, who were bound to her by the holiest ties, because she most heartily 
believed it her duty to the France she loved. She made her way,with calm and 
deliberate preparation, sane in mind, and devoted in purpose, ready to die 
that others might live, and she succeeded in finding access to the cold- 
blooded and criminal ruler of the hour, who held in his right hand the lives 
of millions of Frenchmen, and who, by jotting a mark of blood opposite 
the name of any Frenchman or Frenchwoman, could hurl his victim into 
that dismal dungeon, from which there was no escape, except through the 
iron jaws of the guillotine. She devoted herself to this holy work, caring 
nothing, and providing nothing, for her own safety, and looking to no re- 
ward from her countrymen. It was an act of patriotic self-devotion, which 



95 

will warm all hearts through all after-time. It was no precedent for this 
cowardly and cold-blooded assassination. She laid down her life as cheer- 
fully for her country, as Stonewall Jackson laid down his. Both acted upon 
an honest, even though it were a mistaken conviction of duty. Such men, 
such women, we all honor; but a flippant lawyer, taking the word of 
a murderous liar, is really convinced by his client, as you may fairly infer; 
that, when he was strolling about Washington and visiting the Corcoran 
Gallery — for lie was studying precedents, the Lawrence case, the earlier 
cases of murder, the case in New York, the case of Hiscock's murder — he 
found Charlotte Corday, and detected in her beautiful face the evidences 
of insanity. Clearly, the assassin, or his counsel, made the discovery that 
the Charlotte Corday, who will live immortally in history as one ready to give 
her own life for her bleeding country, was really insane. Mr. Reed professes 
to have discovered it in her eye, and, forsooth, he brings forth this mur- 
derer, and places him by the side of that pure and beautiful girl, who gave 
her life that others might live, and seriously appeals to you to look at this 
Charlotte Corday in pantaloons, and pity him, as if he were, like her, a fe- 
male martyr to a sense of patriotic duty. 

Gentlemen, do you think that Charlotte Corday played the part, which 
in this man has so disgusted us all. When, on rising that morning, she 
walked out calmly, with the crucifix on her breast, to the place of execu- 
tion, the world knew that hers, though a bloody, was a patriotic homicide. 

You remember the gusto, with which the prisoner dwelt on the case of 
Wilkes Booth. I confess, though I know it will not accord with the general 
sentiment of the country, I have, notwithstanding my clear conviction 
that Wilkes Booth was a sane man, a feeling in respect of him, not that he 
^as right, not that he had any justification, even in his own conscience, 
for that murder ; but that there were, in bis case, circumstances whiqh tend 
to mitigate in some degree the horror we feel for the act of the assassin. 
He was a man wholly devoted to the cause which had signally failed; he 
looked upon Abraham Lincoln, and rightly felt that his calmness, his wisdom, 
his devotion, his patriotism, had been the iron bar, which had prevented the 
Southern States from achieving their indepedence; he had been a brilliant 
play-actor; he had been in the midst of many temptations, and among many 
evil surroundings; the heat and excitement of that bloody war had not yet 
passed away; the circumstances excited him ; he was stimulated by the 
love of notoriety, which has led to so many crimes ; he mingled this, with 
the idea of a wild and exalted patriotism ; he became infatuated, not 
insanely, but irrationally, with the idea that he should be rendering a ser- 
vice to that portion of the country, with which he had cast his fortunes, if 
he committed the act for which he was ready to lay down his life. 

The Prisoner. That is a lie, and you know it. Booth killed Lincoln 
from revenge, and I shot Garfield from patriotism. 



90 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing). And bo lie bravely and manfully gave up 
his own life. Of course, neither you nor I would justify his act. It was 
defended, neither by the Confederate army, nor the people of the Confed- 
erate States. Ii was justified by no man North or South; l>ut I cannot 
say that, even now, I have no1 some degree of commiseration for the bril- 
liant life so unfortunately ended, by an .-km which, I really believe, was in 
-Mine degree induced by a feeling of misguided patriotism. Arc there any 
of the mitigating circumstances here, which attach even to the memory of 
the murderer of Abraham Lincoln? None. When this murderer did his 

od\ work, it is true he shot from behind, bul he felt that he was n<>i 
putting his life in peril, for lie was nol like Booth, in the mi< 1st of a 
crowded audience. Booth ; with the instincts of manhood, and believing 
he mighl be justified by his Southern countrymen, Leaped from thegallery 
to the stage, afterwards mounted his horse, rode for life or death, as it 
mighl chance, and, as it chanced, rode to death. Within the blazing llames 
of the building in which he was penned, as God sometimes pens murderers, 
he -till presented the lion front of a brave man, and although maimed and 
crippled in body, he died like a hunted Mai;- at bay. 

The Prisoner. I shol my man in broad daylight. 

Mr. Porter. 'The President of the United States was not "my man," 
ami this coward, this disappointed office-seeker, this malignant, diabolical, 

crafty, calculating, cold-bl led murderer, carefully providing death for 

his victim and safety for himself — will you seriously compare him with 
Wilkes Booth, who, though a misguided, was, at all events, a brave man? 

Gentlemen, this .man has told you of the preparations he had made for 
the murder. He had been making them for years. It was a contingency 
which he had in view, while he was in New York practicing law, in des- 
perate circumstances, as a jail vagabond, and attorney, lie was, in a nar- 
row sense, a student, lie read the popular literature of the time, lie 
nursed in himself, that strange love of ignominious notoriety, which he ad- 
mired so much in Wilkes Booth. Though warned by his landlord, Mr 

Shaw, that this was a kind of notoriety, which was associated with dan-ei- 
and infamy, he does not seem i<> have profited bj the admonition. Now, 
when he is in peril of the penalty of death, he deliberately contemplates 
this well-contrived pretense of inspiration or insanity, a- one of the many 
brillianl conceptions, or morbid projects, as Dr. Spitzka would have called 
them, which opened indefinitely before him. of course he did not believe 
that. 

It illustrates the peculiarity of the man's mind, his wickedness, his 
recklessness, his depravity, that he should even think of such wild ami 
puerile absurdities. I have had my attention called to a passage in 
a popular novel, which was published in L8t36, in the city of Phila- 
delphia, by the celebrated ami brillianl authoress Ouida, which illus- 



97 

trates just the topics I am dealing- with. In the course of a dialogue be- 
tween two of her characters, we get a graphic illustration of this order of 
man. A reference had been made to a remark of Wilkes, the celebrated 
Englishman, who said that he was the ugliest man in England, but only 
fifteen minutes behind the handsomest man, as we learn from another 
authority. In reference to this casual remark, one of the characters in the 
book I have cited, which has been, since 1860, on every book-stall where 
popular novels are sold, says : 

Let me be the ugliest man in Europe, rather than remain in mediocrity among- the 
medium plain faces. There is not a hair' 8 difference between notoriety and fame. Be 
celebrated for something, and if you can't jump into a pit, like Curtius, pop yourself 
into a volcano, like Empedocles ; the foolery is immortalized, Justus well as a heroism, 
the world talks of you, that is (ill yoet want. 

The Prisoner. I don't want any one to talk about me. They talk about 
me too much. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing to read.) The prisoner evidently anticipates 
the next sentence. 

If I could not be Alexander I'd be Diogenes ; if I weren't a great hero, I'd be the most 

ingenious murderer. 

This morbid and thirsty love of notoriety, has possessed this man, from the 
beginning. You will see that it has steadily pursued him through life, and 
in the end has brought him to the dock ; and it lias really made him think 
that his name, simply because he had murdered an illustrious man, had 
become illustrious, and that he can send resounding down through the 
ages, whatever silly messages he pleases ; that he can blacken, at his 
pleasure, the memory of the judge, or blast even the memory of the 
President whom he murdered. All this is the outcome of a spirit, which 
we find cropping out as early as 1861, when he was a menial in the Oneida 
Community, and in his twentieth year. What had been achieved by the 
prisoner ? He had never earned for himself one single honest penny ; but 
Mr. Reed would have you believe that he was a perfect model of purity, 
industry, honor, religion, and morality. 

In one of the sickening and maudlin letters, which he spawned from 
time to time, he says : 

1 have forsaken everything for Christ. 
A pious, canting hypocrite, as you see, from the beginning. 

Reputation, honor of men, riches, fame, worldly renown. 

The boy of nineteen had expected all these, but he had gone to the 
Oneida Community, and abandoned them all for Christ. What a devo- 
tion to the Saviour, whom he afterwards tosses on his horn. That is 
his puerile and improbable story. I had marked quite a number of 
these curious passages in his letters, in order to refer to them. But this is 



98 

enough for the purpose of illustration. This man lias been all his life 
craving money, and procuring it as he could, by begging and borrowing 
devices, or by crafty, cunning, and well-considered frauds. 

The Prisoner. I don't care a snap about it. 

Mr. Porter. I don't think, gentlemen, you can find two letters in that 
whole record, written by him, in which mention is not made of his present 
need of money. The clamor from the dock has constantly been about 
money. 

The Prisoner. Money has been sent to me by my friends. 

Mr. Porter. The witnesses for the government, on the theory of the 
prisoner, are swearing for money. The government is prosecuting for 
money. The prisoner says : 

1 wouldn't have killed President Garfield, as I feel now, for a million of dollars. 

The Prisoner. Nor for fifty million. 

Mr. Porter. You have heard that over and over again, until it sickens 
and nauseates you. lie is, of course, very penitent, with the gallows 
standing stiff and erect in front of him. 

Money has been this man's God from the beginning, money, and an 
inordinate craving for notoriety. The "Hon." Charles Guiteau, "The 
Little Giant of the West," glorifying himself by false pretenses, wherever 
he was, and seriously endeavoring to persuade you, that Providence wrought 
a miracle in his behalf. 

The same spirit of murder which was there on the 2d of July, was there 
when the prisoner was an applicant for the Chilian Mission. Unfortu- 
nately for his purpose, Mr. Greeley died. There was no special interven- 
tion of Providence m that case, to give him the Chilian mission, which he 
asked. 

Later and special interposition of Providence in his behalf is put forward, 
showing the same insatiate appetite for notoriety, that Ave have had illus- 
trated before. It was foreshadowed by Mr. Scoville. It was a part of 
the preparation of the defense, but there is no human being to swear to it, 
except the prisoner, and he thinks that you can be swerved into the belief 
of that foolish story. He got, as he pretends, upon the cars one night. 
"As a dead-head of the Lord;" 1 and he proceeded from New York to New- 
ark, when an irreverent and unreasonable conductor, whose place depended 
upon his fidelity, came around and wanted the prisoner's fare. Well, he 
told the conductor, " ('ho rye it to the Lord;'''' The conductor did not 
think that his charge, without any letter of credit, would bring the money. 

So the conductor called to the brakeman, to put Guiteau off at the next 
station, and have him arrested; and this poor, pretended lunatic was so 
frightened with the horrible idea of being arrested, in a case where he 
and everybody knows there is no power to arrest, as for crime 



99 

The Prisoner. (Interrupting.) There was, in that particular case. I 
would-have gotten into the lockup. 

Mr. Porter. He may have committed a personal fraud, but I know 
nothing of that. Mr. Scoville says he was so frightened, that "the poor 
lunatic," although the train was going at the rate of thirty-five miles an 
hour, went to the platform and leaped off, and Providence preserved him. 

The Prisoner. That is true, sir. 

Mr. Porter. It is as true as his oath, and no truer. It is as true as 
anything uttered by this liar from the beginning, and I do not believe 
either his assertion or his oath. He felt that it was not true, and that it 
was doubtful whether it would be received as truth, and so he adds a cir- 
cumstance, to the effect that lie had a seventy-five dollar overcoat on, and 
that this was lost. What? A man with a seventy-five dollar overcoat 
on, not ready to pledge it, in order to save himself from summary arrest \ 

The Court adjourned at that stage of the testimony. When we met 
again, you can readily imagine what took place. 
The witness says : 

I wish to correct a part of my testimony, your honor. I said yesterday that I had 
a seventy-five dollar overcoat. It was, hut 1 only paid $5 for it. 

The Prisoner. I got it at a second-hand store. T was poor at that time. 
The man thought I w T as a good fellow, and gavt it to me. 

Mr. Porter. Why, gentlemen, if lie had really been guilty of that extrem- 
ity of cowardice, how much occasion for gratitude would there have been ? 
It would have averted the sacrifice of the life of the foremost citizen of 
the republic. Put those who jump in terror from a train, going at the rate 
of thirty-five miles an hour, don't come out of it with a torn overcoat or 
a mere scar. Yet he really has a small scar, that serves not only this iut 
many otht r purposes. It is the scalp scar of that imaginary stone, thrown in 
boyhood; it is the duplicate scar of that fall on the New Jersey railroad 
ties, in which I confess 1 have no faith ; it is the scar of that leap for life, 
at the peril of his seventy-five dollar overcoat. Gentlemen, remember 
that this is nothing, but the fabricated statement of a vile and dishonest 
man, for the purpose of convincing you that he is really an insane man. 

You remember that of the experts whom we have called, who are com- 
petent by experience and observation, as well as a personal examination of 
some tens of thousands of lunatics — every one says, after personal 
examination of this prisoner, that beyond all doubt he was never insane. 
Of the thirteen eminent men, who swear in our behalf to that conclusion, 
I need only to say, that three were subpoenaed in the first instance by the 
prosecution, but many more were subpoenaed by the defendant. His wit- 
nesses came here, with the conviction that he was insane. Their judg- 
ment was very naturally based upon published rumors 



100 

The Prisoner. (Interrupting.) They all said, I Avas insane on the 2d of 
July, and after they saw Corkhill they changed their minds. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) After I cross-examined the prisoner, they 
all came to the conclusion that he was perfectly sane, and notified the 
counsel for the prisoner, that they all so believed. When the defendant's 
witnesses were gravely interrogated as experts, on the hypothetical ques- 
tion, whether if the prisoner was insane, he was insane, these experts, 
who came as witnesses for the defendant, agreed that upon a hypoth- 
esis, utterly unwarranted by the evidence, the prisoner would have been 
really insane. The actual fact was, that after they examined the man, 
they all agreed that the prisoner was sane and responsible. Some of them 
left ; some remained. 

Now, gentlemen, can there be a doubt, that these witnesses, subpoenaed 
for the defendant, standing as they do among the foremost men in this 
country; selected simply because they were foremost men, men of national 
and European reputation, men who are known as eminent scientists through- 
out the world, men to the care of whom, you or I would wish to be com- 
mitted, if we were unfortunately to be stricken with this affliction of in- 
sanity^ — all these men concur in the conclusion, from their experience, and 
their observation, that this man had no disease of the brain — had no 
shadow of insanity ; was as sane as any one of us. These are the wit- 
nesses; and Mr. Reed will, as he has already done, seriously appeal to 
some one of you "twelve emperors" to decide : 

Whether you will find your verdict according to the facts, or whether you will, as 
kings or emperors, condone an unparalleled and atrocious crime. 

This cold-blooded and malignant prisoner, who professed to have slept 
well through those thirty days — when he saw the effect of his testimony, 
took it back with most earnest promptitude, and said he couldn't sleep, 
and that the first good night's rest he had, was after he got in jail as the 
murderer of the President. 

When you hear such utterances from the prisoner, do you not know that 
what he says is sheer and absolute imposture ? 

At this point the Court took a recess until 1 o'clock. 

After recess. 

Mr. Scoville. If it please the Court, before Judge Porter commences, I 
want to say a single word. I believe I interrupted Mr. Davidge only once 
in two days, to which I think he took exception. All I want to say, your 
honor, is this : I shall not interrupt the gentleman, unless I think it very 
necessary I should, and when I do so, I will do it in a respectful manner, 
and I would like to have a respectful hearing. I certainly will not inter- 
rupt him in any way, if I can avoid it, so as to disturb the current of his 
argument. It is not my purpose to do that. I simply want an opportunity 



101 
I 

to call the attention of the Court, in a proper manner, and in a respectful 
way, to any matter that may arise, without associate counsel jumping up 
and, before I can make my exception or make my objection, insisting that 
I shall not be heard. That is all I have to say about it. 

Mr. Porter. (Resuming.) I thought of your severe exhaustion, before 
the adjournment, and made, up my mind that, no matter what might hap- 
pen, I could safely intrust this case to your charge without the addition 
even of a single word. But I will use an hour, possibly two, certainly not 
more, in recalling to your attention a few of the pregnant and significant 
utterances of the prisoner, some on oath, some in his own handwriting, and 
some from the prisoner's dock; for I feel that I shall be doing you great 
injustice, if I should detain you one hour beyond what seems to be abso- 
lutely necessary in the concluding argument. You know me. I think I 
know you. I have been under your observation, and I have known you for 
two and a half months. I believe every man on this panel to be an upright 
juror, and a fair-minded representative of his countrymen. If I fail in pre- 
senting to you the leading facts in their full force, your recollection, in aid 
of mine, your judgment and your clear sense of right, will make up any 
deficiencies of mine, whether due to my comparative inexperience in the 
department of criminal law, or to the present infirm condition of my health; 
for I have shared with you, and with his honor, the Judge, a most oppres- 
sive malarial atmosphere, which none of us could avoid. 

Gentlemen, there is one man, at least, between you and the grave of the 
slaughtered President, who absolutely knows, whether this defense is a 
mere sham, utterly and absolutely false, a simple imposture. I think it 
will only be needful for me to occupy the remaining hours of this trial 
with his oicn declarations- and it will be mainly, in the prisoner's language 
that I shall address you. These statements were not given spontaneously, 
as evidence of his own, of his clear and undoubted guilt. They were 
almost involuntarily made, in pursuance of that law of heaven, by which 
" truth will out," bursting through all concealments, and opening to the 
light of day the actual facts, in despite of all human devices to cover them; 
and if it come from no other source, it will burst from the conscious and 
swollen heart of the criminal. I have not reduced my extracts to order, 
because I intended to continue my address until to-morrow, and I have not 
been able to formulate it. I feel, however, that the time has come, when 
this cause should be sent to you, and decided before this day's sun goes 
down. The country and the world will breathe freer for your verdict, for 
all humanity respects the security of human life. 

I have hastily, during the intermission, glanced over, and thrown out 
such passages as I did not, in the present aspect of the case, care to trouble 
you with ; and I have marked others for citation. I have not even time 
to arrange the order of my topics of remark ; but surely I need not; for 
every material utterance that is to be made to you now, will come from 



102 

the assassin of President Garfield. lie seriously, and perhaps honestly 
thinks he has so masked this case, that your intelligence and your appre- 
ciation of the motives of human action cannot penetrate it. If I do not 
reduce them to methodical order, you understand the unprecedented cir- 
cumstances under which I present them. They are the utterances of the 
man, who says he stakes his life on the act, and who says he is ready to- 
go to the gallows on this political issue, and heaven forbid that you should 
interfere with his well-considered purpose. 

Now, we have before us, the one man on earth, who can look into the 
depths of Guiteau's heart. This puerile testimony is given by the prisoner 
on oath. I asked him the plain and pertinent question in view of his creed, 
as a disciple of John H. Noyes : 

You never had a devilish delusion? 

If any human being in this assembly can say, that the devil never 
tempted him, surely it is not this prisoner. The prayer so familiar to all, 
contains a petition that we be not led into temptation, and the Divine 
author of that prayer knew human nature. Is there really one that is- 
without sin ? The Divine answer is, No. In the case of Guiteau, we 
learn, somewhat to our surprise, that the murderer of the President was 
in i-i r tempted, and "never had a devilish delusion." This New York 
lawyer, alone of the human race! This is the same man, who said, over 
his own signature, before he became a liar of n<<tii_>n<il reputation, and 
in reference to his experience in the Oneida Community : 

1 see clearly, that i" have been the victim of a self-willed, self-conceited fatidical spirit, 
and I hereby renounce my separation from it, and loyally yield myself to be molded 
by the Community spirit. 

For two or three years previous to my leaving the Community, I was tormented with 
the conviction that I had a great mission to perform, but now I am satisfied that it 
was a devilish delusion that tormented me. 

The Prisoneu. (Interjecting.) I take that back /tow. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) As agile now from the dock, as he was in 
creed and conscience in the past. The brother and the father most firmly 
believed, that he had surrendered himself to the service of the devil, early 
in Ins vile and blasted life. They confirm, what he says in this letter. 
From a very early period in his life he was under devilish delusions, not 
insane delusions. This masked homicide says to you again and again : " I 
don't care a snap for notoriety, and never did ! " 

"I serve the Lord, and he is responsible for my board charges." 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Correct. . 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing to read.) " I have forsaken everything for 
Christ." " Reputation. " Certainly he forsook that. " Honor." Certainly he 
forsook that. "Riches." Certainly he never forsook wealth. "Fame." Most 
certainly he never forsook that. And " worldly renown," to attain which, in 



103 

the spirit of pure diabolism, lie comes here to defy to law, and to justify 
cold-blooded and malicious murder. I have transcribed these notes from 
the record, and so shall not stop to turn to the pages. 

This assassination was an inspiration — what the homicide calls an in- 
spiration. As at an earlier day, he had been inspired to go to the Oneida 
Community, as he had been afterwards inspired t<> leave it, as he had 
been inspired to establish the Theocrat, which was, as he in effect admits, 
literally stolen from Noyes, and to anticipate his intended publication; 
as he admits over his own signature; so he proceeds to his work. For 
whom? For the Lord, as he would have you believe. "It appears to 
me," as he says in his letter, "that there is a splendid chance for some one 
to do a big thing for God, for humanity, and for himself.'''' A chance to 
do a big thins/ for Charles Julius t_i"it<<in. 

That was the so-called inspiration. He had no ill-will to mankind. He 
said he never had any ill-will to mankind, or to any human being. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Correct. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) No, it is not correct ; because he said to 
you, he had ill-will towards John H. Xoyes 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I forgot that. 

Mr. Porter, (Continuing.) And that he ought to have been hung 
twenty years ago. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) There is some little truth in that. That 
is the worst case I have on hand. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Tie says that "for 6,00'0 years" — now ob- 
serve, gentlemen, for this has very singular significance: 

For 6,000 years the world has been a school of errors. They knew not God nor 
Christ. Their religion — 

Which was the religion of mankind. 
A mere cant. 

This is the man who shocked the moral ideas even of the Oneida Com- 
munity. 

Their social life is worthy only of the darkest days of Judaism. 

This is his judgment upon mankind through sixty centuries, embracing, 
in that long line of successive generations, all there is that is honorable in 
the history of the human race, and recorded to-day in the divine annals, 
which will never be effaced. Did Voltaire ever utter so wicked a senti- 
ment? Would Judas Iscariot if he were alive? 

He was going in, as he says, to do a big thing for God and inspiration, 
and himself. 

I claim that Tarn in the employ of Jesus Christ ,(■ Co. 



104 

This, gentlemen, is the reverent and prayer-making Christian; the mur- 
derer of the President, who does things, merely through the sincerity of 
his religious conviction, and in violation of all God's commandments. His 
authority to commit murder did not come to him in a vision, either by day 
or by night; it was not audible; it was not written or oral. It came to him 
in the form of a privatt and 'personal conception, that he had been baffled 
and disappointed in his claim as an office seeker; that if the Stalwart party 
had been in power, it would not have disappointed him. He foolishly be- 
lieved, that if he could replace them in power, they would reward him. He 
claimed to be inspired by the Deity, and he murdered President Garfield, 
simply because the Deity did not think it worth while to work a miracle, 
in order to convince him that it was not, as he suspected from the begin- 
ning, <ni inspiration of the devil to assassinate the President. 

To proceed with this infamous letter : 

The very ablest and strongest firm in the universe, and what I can do is limited only 
by their power and purpose. 

Again, as illustrative of the character of this man, as represented to 
you by his brother-in-law, Mr. Scoville. 

I decided to leave the Community clandestinely. 

Should you be so good as to loan to me, Mr. Scoville, now $50, just at this emergency 
[though he does not want it, and probably would not accept it,] such an unexpected act 
would be appreciated, and the imaginary loan would be promptly returned. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) He loaned that amount to me, and I re- 
turned it. 

Mr. Porter. Never; except as bait money to secure further advances. 
What were the relations existing between these men, which made him, in 
this particular instance, fulfill his promise I do not know. I doubt whether 
he ever fulfilled one before, to any human being, except under some 
pressing and immediate necessity. What had transpired between them 
in the past, I do not know. But that there was something in the past 
which might admit of easy explanation, is indicated by the following 
sentence : 

If the money is sent, please send me a genuine fifty-dollar greenback, without you 
can do better. 

A genuine fifty-dollar greenback ! 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I don't know why I put that in there. I 
must have been cranked badly. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) The explanation dot's not seem to come, even 
now. To proceed, while the prisoner is in an apologetic mood: 

Perhaps this is the place to ask your charity for the lack of good sense displayed in 
the letter, which I wrote some three or four years since. 



105 

Written, as you remember, when he was in the Oneida Community, 
which carries it back to 1862 or 1863. 

Declining to enter into businees with you. 

This so-called insane man, scarcely of age, not yet admitted to the bar, 
is offered by his brother-in-law, an opportunity to go into business with 
him, and here he is apologizing, for the indignant answer that he gave in 
declining an offer, which, in his childish vanity, he thought ignominious. 

I take these extracts, referring to his papers, just as they happen to reach 
my hand, from my intelligent and valued young friend, Mr. Roth, who has 
been of great service to me on this wearisome trial. You will see that 
they all come in place. 

I not only lelieee in a personal devil. 

I have no doubt that is the reason, why he was so terribly frightened 
when Jones shot at him. But, as he says in his letter : 

I not only believe in a personal devil, but I believe in a personal God, and when my 
pressure is upon me, / test titan in that particular case. 

Speaking of the murder, and the authority by which he claims to have 
committed it, he says : 

At the end of two weeks 1 discovered that the Deity did it. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) / did it, and he has confirmed it. 

Mr. Porter. You see, that even in this act of blood, he assigns the 
second plcuH to the Deity. 

Proceeding with his statement : 

I want to say right here, that if the political situation had not existed, there would 
have been no cause for his removal. 
As I have repeatedly stated. 

What? Does he seriously assume to answer for the Deity? Did the 
Deity explain to him his reasons? Did the Deity submit it to /m judg- 
ment, foolish and finite, whether President Garfield should live or die? 

Gentlemen, you observe this mild word "Removal." This was a poli- 
tical removal. The prisoner frequented libraries. He was reading all the 
time, lie aped the style of Napoleon, and of other great men. He chuckles 
over it in your presence. He tells us he is pointed, terse and graphic. He 
had evidently studied the history of Charlotte Corday. He had studied 
the trial of Lawrence, who had attempted the " Removal of President 
Jackson.'" He had studied the history of the McFarland murder in New 
York. He found, that keen lawyers had put the proposition, that a mur- 
der without malice in fact, is not a murder in law. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) Von were one of the attorneys in that 
case and got beat. 



[in; 

Mr. Porter. I never had any connection with the case, as counsel or 
otherwise The assassin had read, as every reading man does, the works 
of Shakspeare. He had studied the dramatic parts, in which villainy, 
in all its phases, is portrayed by that greal master. 

For ii was to this, Guiteau had dedicated his life. Where did lie find 
this word •• Removal" to soothe a troubled conscience, and soften the act 
of murder? It was doubtless in the study of one of the most vile characters 
conceived by the genius of Shakespeare, and studied, not only by those 
who like to know the varied developments of human nature, bul especially 
by those, who seek in Shakspeare to learn, how in other days villany 
wrought its work, and how it thrived. 

I refer to the preparations he made for the crime; for as he stole the 
theory of the second advent, and the doctrine of a personal devil, from 
N'oyes — as he siole from Chandos the motto of his life, as I showed you 
this morning — so he stole from Shakspeare, the easy method of smoothing 
over murder, by calling it a mere " Removal." 

1 refer, first, to the second scenein the I V act of Othello, ay hi eh contains 
the dialogue between the tempter Iago, and the tempted Roderigo. 

Iago. Sir, there is especial commission come from Venice, to depute Cassio in 
Othello's place. 

You remember that Roderigo sought to dishonor the bed of the .Moor, 
and that Iago knew it. 

Rod. Is thai Hue ? Why, then Othello and Desdemona return to Venice. 

[ago. Oh, no; lie goes into Mauritania, and takes away with him the fair Desde- 
mona, unless his abode be lingered here by some accident ; wherein none can so de- 
terminate as the "removing" of Cassio. 

Rod. How do you mean, " mnoving" of him ? 

Iago. Why, by making him uncapable of Othello's place ; knocking out his 
brains. 

The seed planted soon brought forth fruit. I refer to the first scene in 
the fifth act. 

Iago. Here, stand behind this bulk. 

It was night, ; as it was, that night, when Guiteau dogged the President 
to the house of Blaine, lying in wait in the alley, to murder him. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I caught him in broad daylight. It 
was a square, open, manly act. There was uothing sneaking or mean 
about it, sir. 

.Mr. Porter. (Continuing to quote:) 

Iago. Here, stand behind this bulk : straight will he come : 
Wear thy good rapier hare, and put it home; 
Quick, quick; tear nothing; I'll lie at thy elbow: 
II makes us or it mars us; think on that, 
And ti\ most firm thy resolution. 



107 

Rod. Be near at hand; 1 may miscarry int. 

[ago. Here, at thy hand ; be bold, and take thy sword. [Retires.] 

Rod. I have no great devotion to the deed. 

Perhaps that too was "a hot night." 

And yet he has given me satisfying reasons. 
' Tis but a man gone: — forth my sword; he dies. 

Do you see, in the very language, in which he recounts the murder, it 
is a "removal." In the same spirit he writes: 

He has wrecked the Republican party, and for this he 'lies : 

He has given me satisfying reasons. 

True, he gave him a chance, as the hunter does the wolf. He wrote to 
him to know "whether he, Guiteau, would receive the appointment. "I 
wanted an answer, one way or the other.'''' He warned him to remove the 
Secretary who had refused to appoint him to this office, or he and his ad- 
ministration would come to grief. 

One word about the oroide watch. Mr. Scoville says it was the inven- 
tion of a perjured villain. " Out of the mouths of two witnesses shall one 
be condemned." Two witnesses have spoken, and the prisoner dared not 
come back to the stand and contradict them. Here is his language. 

If that testimony was a fabrication, did not the prisoner know it? If 
that was really a gold watch which he pledged, did not the prisoner know 
it? If it was a pure invention, what means this statement of Guiteau, in the 
official record ? 

The watch was worth $50, and you couldn't tell it from gold. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I didn't te# the man it was gold. I let 
him be his own judge. I handed him the watch, and lie fixed the value of 
it. I didn't deceive him in any way. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Then the story is not << fabrication. How 
skillful Guiteau may be, in the valuation of mock watches, in imitation of 
gold, I do not know. Scoville thinks, that it is not at all impossible, that a 
person coming into a pawnbroker's office, with a gentlemanly address and 
agreeable manner, presenting the card of a lawyer in the first city in the 
country, with references to his high-toned boarding-houses, and his splen- 
did connections, and representing that, by misfortune, he was reduced to 
a condition in which it was necessary to pawn his watch, should have been 
able to obtain an advance of $25. But how did it happen, that after he 
obtained the money, he went back to his office and chuckled over it, if it 
was not a cheat, and an intended cheat. Again, the cjuestion has arisen 
here, as one of law, what constitutes criminal responsibility? The 
prisoner, who has devoted much attention to that subject, has admonished 
us that Dr. Spitzka's craneology theory is all humbug, but that spiritology 
is the key to unlock this case. He says: 

Will is controlled by spirits, not by intellectual processes. 



108 

His lienor will tell you, that if the will of this man was controlled by in- 
tellectual processes, as yours and mine are, and if he could do or refrain 
from doing a criminal ad ; if he could choose betwen the personal God 
ami the personal devil ; if he could elect whether to shoot or not to 
shoot the victim of his malice, he is guilty in law. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) lie won't do anything of the kind, sir, 
under the decision of the New York Court of Appeals. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Guiteau differs materially in opinion from 
that learned Court. 

Hut let us resume the reading: 

I have always been a peaceable man. I don't fight with anybody, and uo one fights 
with me. 1 never struck my father, and 1 never thought of striking him. 
I don't care a snap about notoriety — not a snap. 

That is a good quartette— solid : Conkling, Grant, Arthur and 1. 

Not, of course that he cared a snap about notoriety. 

General . \ rth ur will take care of me. 
The government don't want me convicted. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is true. 

.Mi-. Porter. (Continuing.) The gentlemen in charge of this prosecu- 
tion are Colonel Corkhill, Mr. Davidge, and myself. 

The gentlemen here don't want me convicted, and I ain't going to be, probably, 
I repudiate the idea of Mr. Scoville. / am not insane now, and never pretended that 
I was. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) On the 2d day of July, and for 30 days 
before that, I was insane; that was an insane act. That is Avhat I have 

always said about it. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Again at page 1747: 

I do not pretend that I am any more insane than you are ; nor haven't been, since the 
firing of that shot. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is what I have always said about 
it, sir. It is true. 

.Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) What a sudden cure of the disease of the 

brain .' 

Transitory mania is my ens,. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) You were on the ease of Sickles, and got 
beat on the very doctrine you are trying to fool this jury with. 

.Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) The prisoner, as tcsual, is mistaken. I had 
nothing to do with either of those cases, Bui Guiteau's, should be called 
a thunder-and-lightning order of insanity. It comes with no warning. It 
makes its appearance like a stroke of lightning, a flash upon the night sky. 



109 

The stroke is given, and the flash is gone. The prisoner was entirely sane 
before the flash of that June night, entirely sane after the stroke of the 
July bullet. He was the victim of transitory mania, as he lias so often told 
you. Dr. Barker photographed Guiteau, although he had not exam- 
ined him. He did so in such vivid colors, that if his testimony stood 
alone, eminent as he is as a scientist, it would han<;- this prisoner, when you 
apply to Guiteau the scientific tests, which the doctor so admirably eluci- 
dated. Let us resume the reading: 

I claim transitory mania. 
That is all there is of the case. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is exactly it, sir. That is all I 
claimed from the start. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) 

I don't claim that I am insane any more than yon are, except, on — 

Not before, not after — 

on the 2d of July. 

When the sun rose on the morning of the second of July, President 
Garfield was in the full vigor of health and life, honored and trusted, re- 
spected and beloved. When the sun went down that day, General Gar- 
field was in the agonies of a long, slow, torturing and lingering death. A 
great calamity had, in the meanwhile, happened to this swindling Guiteau. 
When the sun rose that morning he woke from a refreshing night's sleep. 
He took his bath; he ate his hearty meal; he examined his bull-dog pistol, 
which he had bought some weeks before; he found it was in working con- 
dition; he wiped it to keep it so;, he wrapped it up carefully; he arranged 
the papers that were to be found in his pockets after the murder; he ar- 
ranged those that were to be hurried off that day by the telegraphic wire; 
he went to the depot; he completed the arrangements for his own safety ; 
he provided for all the contingencies that might arise. Once more, he 
thought he had better look at the weapon of murder; he went to a water- 
closet, examined it and approved it. He came out and watched the 
people, as they entered, unconscious of the presence of an armed murderer. 
He waylaid the President. Just then— just then, he was seized with 
a sudden attack of transitory mania, fired, fired again, and while Presi- 
dent Garfield was swaying to the ground, he turned to find his way to 
that pre-engaged carriage, when he was intercepted by the policeman. 
Sis transitory mania was gone. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I had had it for thirty days. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) This is the insanity which he originally set 
up as a defense. You will remember that he claimed he was insane for 
thirty days from the first of June. 



110 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) That is correct, sir. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) But when ho saw how that was used 
against him, when he discovered, by the course of the argument, that 
this was fatal to his theory 

He fell back on the Abrahamic theory of transitory mania, and his last 
utterance before you was one 'which excluded the thirty days. I read his 
words: 

I don't claim that I was any more insane than you are, and never have, except on the 
2d of July, 1881. 

He read to the same effect in his speech, as I find in the printed 
report, though it did not haj>pen to me to hear it. You did, and will 
remember it. 

Another extract: 

Now. a vast deal of rubbish has got into tins case on both sides. The issue here is, 
who fired that shot, the Deity or me ? 

That is his statement to you, that is his charge to this jury. This man, 
who was acting under the command of Him, who wields the power of the 
universe, and who controls the starry system of worlds that revolve 
about His throne, thinks such protection insufficient for him. He wants 
Washington policemen, and General Sherman's troops, to come to the help 
of the Almighty against the Democrats and Half-breeds. 

He did not trust the power that controls this world, and the myriads 
of worlds, beyond it. Why did he want help ? 

1 knew 1 would be allot or hung at once, if "I was not protected by the jail and the 
troops. 

And yet this man did not know that it was wrong to kill. 

He knew who was to be his victim, but he understood human nature 
well enough to feel, that whoever else might be there, they, as well as 
he, recognized the distinction between right and wrong, and that his only 
hope was in taking refuge in the sanctuary of the law, which he so reck- 
lessly violated, and finding his way to the jail, in which he sought to 
protect himself from the common abhorrence and indignation of mankind. 

The Prisoner. (Interjecting.) I needed protection, until I could get 
a hearing, sir. I have got a hearing now and people are satisfied. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) Again, at page 221 (i : 

The only insanity in this case is, what these experts call transitory mania, i. e., the 
Aliiahamic style of insanity. 

He holds, you see, the .lews in a little better repute than his brother-in- 
law, Mr. Scoville. 

They all swear I am sane now. ISfobofly ever pretended that I was not sane, after the 
slmt wasfired. Tlie insanity worked off, the icoment after that shot was fired. 



ill 



On page 10G5: 



Did I know that I teas doing wrong when I shot the President ? My answer is that 
I don I care whether I knew it was wrong or not. 

The jury do, if the prisoner don't. 

Mr. Scoville. Will you please read the rest of that answer? 

Mr. Porter. I shall read nothing at your instance. I do not choose to 
have Mr. Scoville dictate my argument. Gentlemen, allow me now to re- 
cur for a moment to his formal testimony, as a witness in his own behalf. 
I had intended to go through it somewhat in detail. This is his answer 
to the following question by Mr. Scoville: 

Q. I wish now to call your attention to the time and the circumstances when this in- 
spiration, as you call it, first came to your mind. Where was it '? — A. It came to me 
one Wednesday evening — it was the Wednesday evening after Senators Conkling and 
Piatt resigned. At that time there was great excitement in the public mind in refer- 
ence to their resignation, and I felt greatly perplexed and worried about it. I will 
tell you about it, as far as I can. I retired about 8 o'clock that evening, greatly de- 
pressed in mind and spirit from the political situation, and I should say it was about 
half-past 8 before I had gone to sleep, when an irnpri ssion came over my mind, like a 
flash — 

You will see presently that, if he secured from the President the ap- 
pointment to Paris, a like inspiration came over his mind like a flash, that 
Garfield would be renominated in 1884, and he wanted to assist him. But 
to resume : 

that if the President was out of the way, this whole thing would be solved, and every- 
thing would go well. 

I pass over a sentence that is not material. 

The next morning the same impression came upon me with renewed force. I kept 
on reading the papers, with my eye on the possibility of the President's removal— 

Evidently using that term, in the sense of Iago and Roderigo. 

and this impression kept working upon me, grinding me, pressing me, for about two 
weeks. All this time 1 was kept horrified; kept throwing it off ; did not want to give 
the matter any attention at all ; tried to shake it off ; but it kept growing upon me, 
pressing me, goading me ; so, as a matter of fact, at the end of two weeks my mind 
was thoroughly fixed as to the necessity for the President's removal— 

That soft and tender word for murder. 

and the divinity of the inspiration. 

That is, when he himself conceived the idea, and had been for two weeks 
struggling to find out whether it was a devilish delusion, or a divine com- 
mand, he became convinced of — his inspiration. 

The Prisoner. (Interrupting.) The Deity put the idea into my mind, 
and told me to work it out as well as I could. 



112 

Mr. Porter. Did he teU you? I thought you Bwore that you lieard 
no voioe. 

<-l. Whal was the substance of your prayer ? — A. The substance of the prayer was, 
that if it was not the Lord's will that I should remove him, that there would be some 
way by His providence by whicb he would intercept the act. That is always the way 
that I test the Deity. 

The Prisoner. Well, he did not intercepl it ; hepressed me into it. 

Mr. Porter. It is an excellent thing to have a matt of the Guiteau sort 
to apply proper tests to the Deity. 

When I feel the pressure upon me, to do a certain thing, and 1 'have any doubt 
about it, I keep praying that the Deity may stay it in some way. if I am wrong. 

Mr. Scoville asks him, very innocently: 

Q. Did you get any intimation from the Deity whether you were right or wrong, in 
answer to your prayers? — A. Yes, sir ; I never had the slightest shadow on my mind 
as to the divinity of tiie act. and the necessity of it, for the good of the American peo- 
ple. 

Mr. Scoville asks him : 

(). Where did you live during that time?— A. I lived at a first-class boarding-house. 

Q. Herein Washington? — A. Yes, sir; and liad good clothes. I was in very easy 
circumstances, no pressure — about money, and no anxiety about my circumstances 
at all. 

Tli is is the penniless swindler, who was turned away by his landlady, 
because he had been living at her expense, on the pretense of expected 
remittances. 

I asked him this question on cross-examination : 

You determined to kill General Garfield, did you not? — A. I decline to answer. 

What, a man professing to be commissioned by God decline to answer? 

You observe that on Mr. Scoville's examination, lie swore that this 
inspiration came on a Wednesday night. On cross-examination he says, 
in reply to this question : 

Do you think you do not know token it was, you were inspired to do this act? — A. I 
can not tell you whether it was exactly two weeks or lilt ecu days afterward. 

lie has always, as it seems, had a doubt whether he was inspired on the 
1st or the 2d of June. The matter of the command of God to do murder, 
was so immaterial, that the date did not impress itself very strongly on his 
recollection. Of one tiling lie is clear, and that is that t/n command of 
<;<>,/ came two weeks after tin conception by himself. 

"Q. If you made up your mind, it was not his act, was it? — A. I say 
it was." 

Me thinks it, necessary, however, to add an explanation : 

I say that the Deity has confirmed the inspiration thus far, and that He will take 
care of me. 



113 

Q. Why were you praying to God, and professing to be in doubt? Were you in 
doubt? — A. For two weeks I was in doubt, but I have never had any doubt since that 
time. 

That brings us to the 1st of June. Now, you will observe that he 'after- 
wards states, that for six toeeks he was praying to God to intercept his act. 
When were those six weeks? If he never had a doubt after the 1st of 
June, whether he should commit that murder, what was he praying about? 

A. Because all my natural feelings were opposed to the act, just as any man's 
would be. 
Q. You knew it was forbidden by human law? A. Yes. 
Q. You regarded it as murder, then? A. So called; yes, sir; so called. 

The Prisoner. I did not care a snap about it. 

Mr. Porter. (Reading:) 

A. It was no matter for me, it was the Deity. 

Who is this man, gentlemen, according to his own account ? (Reading 
from page 621 :) 

I have always been a peace man; naturally eery cowardly; always kept away from 
any physical danger. 

Again, on page 622 : 

I say the Deity killed the President, and not me. 

Then he goes on to contradict some ten or twelve witnesses, who had 
been sworn for the government and for him, in order that he may com- 
mend his oath to your credence — his own witnesses as well as ours. I 
desire to call your attention to one portion of Mr. Reed's testimony. 
With all his fidelity to his client, he was constrained as an honest man to 
swear to a striking fact, which the prisoner was quick to see, if it stood 
alone, might hang him. 

An incident occurred, in reference to which Mr. Reed coidd not be 
mistaken. On the Tuesday before the assassination, he went, on account 
of his health, to Saratoga Springs. 

Before leaving on that day, a conversation occurred between him and 
the prisoner. 

You think — 

Says the prisoner to him, at page 394 — 

I won't get that place, but you keep watch of the newspapers, and in a few days 
you will see my name mentioned as consul to Paris. 

This is the same man who told you, that from the 1st of June, he not 
only would not have accepted the consulship to Paris, but would not 
have accepted a place in the Cabinet. 

Well, this conversation came like a hard blow from Mr. Reed, but it did 
come. 

The client told his counsel, at the time he was sworn and examined, as 



114 

I see a1 page 103, "7/ /■>•■ "tf> rt;/ false;" but I tliink yon will have no 
doubl of its truth. 

The Pbisonbb. I am my own counsel here. I stand as well as Reed. 

Mr. Porter. Be said on the same page. 

I don'l want any lying or nonsense aboul the defense, and I won't have- it. 

I will remiii'l yon of the conversation before I >top, for I see my time is 
getting limited. Mr. Reed says, there weretwoparts of that conversation. 
One of them related to what, he would see, if he would watch the news- 
papers while he was gone — thai he would be appointed consul to Paris. 
The other was this, reading from page 402: 

It 1 don't get it. I will make a fuss about it in the newspapers, or you will see my 
name in tfa newspapers; something like that. 

Of course, Mr. Reed did not understand what he was alluding to then; 
but he very naturally might, when the telegraphic message came to 
Saratoga four days afterward, announcing the shooting of the President. 
Be understood it probably then, as we understand now, in the light of 
subsequent events, the memorable passage in that letter to President 
Garfield: 

You and your administration will come to grit/. 

The District Attorney. I will read another paragraph from page 
401: 

He said — I should saywhen the conversation was about half closed, when discuss- 
ing the points thai the administration owed him the office, and it was due to him, 
thai ','/'/" did not get it, fa proposed to make a fuss about it. and that 1 would see his 
came in the newspapers. 

Mr. Porter. Now against the oath of his counsel, the prisoner plants 
his unsworn denial. 

Be explains his relations with Colonel Reed about the Paris con- 
sulship. 

I asked him if lie would siyai it. and he said, " Yes, he would sign it." 

That is the application in behalf of this imam man, for a high official 
posil ion. Then he adds: 
lb was the only man who actually did sign it. 
The Prisoner, [expected to gel position on accountof my relations 

with Garfield and Senator Logan, and those men. During the months of 
March and April I stood well with them. I didn't care anything niueh 

■aboul signatures, [f you are in with those men you will be all right; if 

you are no1 voii won't. This is the way. You may go there with a 
bushel of Signatures, and it won't do any good. 

Mr. Porter. These seem to he the political ethics of Charles Guiteau, 
founded on his theological experience and his legal craft! 



115 

On page 648, speaking of Secretary Blaine : 

I simply made the suggestion to him, that in case he assisted me in getting the Paris 
consulship, I should feel bound in case he was a candidate in the nataona convention 
audi took an active part, to assist him in return. This is the way pohUcs are run, 
understand that. You tickle me and I tickle you. 

He has stated his ideas of inspiration, m the papers which I will read 
presently. 

Page 652. 

Q Then there was no inspiration upon your part as to President Garfield's being 
nominated again ?-A. I do not claim any inspiration on that kind of work. 

On page 653 you write to President Garfield: 

Q. " The idea about 1884 flashed upon me like an inspiration:' Was that true?— 
A. Yes, sir; it may have been considered so. 

Strange clashing here between God's inspiration of Guiteau, to aid 
General Garfield to renomination in 1884, and his inspiration to murder him 
in July, 1881. 

On page 661: 

Q. Did you intend to shoot him until he was dead?-A. I intended to remove him, 

• S1 Q. To shoot him until he was deadf-K. Yes, Sir; I supposed one shot would do it. 

Again, on the same page: 

I suppose there were a thousand men in the Republican party that would have shot 
him, if I had not had the inspiration to do it. 

At page 669: 

The President's nomination was an act of God; his election was an act of God; his 
removal was an act of God. 

You will remember that, for we shall have occasion to refer to it pres- 
ently. 

Q Now, we came to the letter, which you say proves that you were inspired. —A. 
I do not say that it proves that I was inspired; I simply say that it shows the condi- 
tion of my mind, to wit, that I thought it was an act of God. 

Q, The President's nomination was an act of God?— A. He was nominated by the 
Chicago Convention. 

Q. Do you think they were inspired ?— A. I think most decidedly it was an act 

of God. . . 

Q. To return to the question which the jury will want to consider. Do you think 
that the nomination of President Garfield was an act of inspiration? 

The Prisoner. Most decidedly, sir, or he would not have got it. Every 
one supposed it would be Grant or Blaine. They were laid aside on live 
minutes' notice. 

Mr. Poktek. (Beading:) 

A. I think most emphatically, sir, that he used the Chicago Convention to nominate 
General Garfield. 



116 

Q. Do you think they w< if— A. in a certain sense / do, wr. 

Q. Do you think the electors \\\\<> elected him were inspired f — A h was not neces- 
sary thai they should be, Bir. 

Q. Was one of your purposes in removing the I' a demand for your 

book? — A. Yes, sir. 

Now let us read his statements in relation to the Theocrat : 

To compete with tlu devil, you must use the Bame agencies in propagating the truth 
thai la 1 <locs in propagating error, ami thereby Bupplanl evil by g i. I am therefore 

hu\it t<> confi n — 

He i^ "iicc more in the confessional — 

thai I should support the paper as other dailies an- ; thai is, by subscriptions and ad- 
vertisements. 

Speaking of his former inspiration, in his letter to the Oneida Com- 
munity : 

I know in my heart, that I am one with Chrisl ami Paul and Mr. Noyes, forever and 
ever, and that no power in the universe can sunder us. 

Gentlemen, I will not read these letters again. 5Tou remember their 
general tenor. This "Stalwaii of the Stalwarts " tells Secretary Blaine, 
that if he will appoint him consul to Paris, he will support him in 1884. 
Failing with him, he writes to Presidenl Garfield, that In- wishes he 
would direct the order to be made thai day, appointing him to the con- 
sulship at Paris, for an inspiration has come upon him, that the General 
in L884 will he renominated to the office. 

Finally comes the assassination; and then he writes to the American 
people, and to all these parties, ami proclaims, "1 am a Stalwart of the 
Stalwarts;" acting with all in turn, on his theological and political maxim 
" You tickli mi and Twilltickh you." 

Now, let us Look lor a moment, gentlemen, at these pipers of his, made 
public on the day of the murder. 

The Prisoner. Not made public, because they were suppressed by 
Corkhill; they Ought to have been, though. They were not made public 
until October, when Mr. Scoville came here. 

.Mr. Porter. (Reading:) 

I intend to place these papers, with my revolver, in the library of the State Depart- 
ment. 

This was one of those statements, which had been prepared, in contem- 
plation of the murder. l>oes he suppose, that the Deity roallv wanted to 
have His name glorified, by having apistol witha whitt ivory handle, rather 

than a pistol with a l>r<>irn handle, deposited in the State Department, to 

commemorate a political assassination. 



117 

The next paper is addressed to the American press, which he thinks is so 
unanimously in Ins favor: 

•J i NE, 1881. 

lo Byron Andrews and his co-journalists : 
I have just shot the President. 

This was written before the bloody act, and he forgot to use the tender 
word " removed." He did not like to admit on this trial, that he even shot 
him; but at that time, lie was confident of Stalwart support. He thought 
these men would come to his rescue, and defend, reward, and honor him. 

The Prisoner. As a matter of fact they are on my side to-day. 

Mr. Porter. (Continuing.) 

I have some papers for the press. 

We have them here. What are they ? Here is one. 

Washington, Monday, June, 1881. 
The President's nomination was an act of God. 
His election was an act of God. 
His removal is an act of God. 
(These three specific acts of the Deity may furnish the clergy with a text.) 

The clergy who were engaged in preaching a gospel, which he denounced 
a sham and an imposition. 

I am clear in my purpose to remove the President. 

I thought it was the Deify, who was clear in his purpose to remove the 
President; but it seems not. 

I read some of the marked passages : 

I am clear in my purpose to remove the President. It will save the Republic, and 
create a demand for my book. 

In order to attract public attention, the book needs the notice the President's removal will 
yire it. 

You observe this man never loved notoriety. " He did not care a snap 
for it." 

I was an applicant for the Paris consulship. I presume I should have got it — 

This was to cover over the fact, that lie was a disappointed office-seeker, 
and to prepare for his vindication afterwards — 

as General Logan favored my appointment — 

General Logan swears it is not true — 
and the President seemed to favor it — 

It is because he did not seem to favor it, that he died — 

and agreed to leave it with Mr. Blaine. 

So far as appears, the President never saw Guiteau in his life, never 
down even to the hour of his death. He had seen the President, but the 



US 

Presidenl never saw him, and has yet to loofa for tfu first time upon the 
face of i he man who murdered him. 

Who conceived the idea of murdering the President? Here is the 
answer of the prisoner, made public on the day of the assassination : 

To //: i u e > " peoph : 

T conceived the idea o£ removing the President, four week- ago. Not a soul knew of 
iu\ purpose. I conceived tin idea myself, and kepi it to myself. I read the newspapers 
can-fully, for and againsl the administration, and gradually the conviction settled on 
me thai the President's removal was a political necessity. 

Why? BecauseGodcommanded.it? No. 

Because lie proved a traitor to the men thai made him, and thereby imperiled the 
life of the Republic. 

Then, again : 

' In the President's madness, he lias wrecked the once grand old Republican party, 
and/"/' thii he dies. 

The murder was not in execution of the judgment of <>'<></, but of the 
judgment of Guiteau, the baffled applicant for the Paris consulship. 

It will make my frit nd Arthur. 

What smt of ,i j'r'n /,,/ President Arthur is of his, you may infer from the 
manner in which you heard him reviled the other day, by this prisoner's 
brother-in-law. 

The Prisoner, lie did not represent me, sir, any more in that matter 
than he has in this case. 

Mr. Porter. (Reading.) 

1 have sacrificed only one. 

That is all Cain sacrificed. Thai is all Wilkes Booth sacrificed. There 
are very few men in an organized society, who are permitted by their 
fellow-cil i/.ens to murder more t ban one. Only one J bul when .1 ones shot 
at " only one," the thing produced a very different impression upon this 
theological gentleman. 

I leave my justification — 

Says the lofty pat Hot- 
To God and the American people. 

The Prisoner. Thai is what I did, and they have justified it, too. 

Mr. Porter, [s it not strange that he had forgotten that God had com- 
manded him to do it? Again : 

June 18, 1881. 
[ intended to remove the Presidenl this morning at the depot, as he took the ears for 
Branch ; bul Mrs. Garfield looked bo thin, and clung so tenderly to the Presi- 
dent's arm, my heart fatted m<- to part them. 



119 

Remember, he was under direct command of God. What did he do 

I decided to take him alone. 

As yet, we do not find the divine commandment, or the new-born inspira- 
tion. 

Again, on the morning of the murder, lie writes : 

Washington, July 2, 1881. 
To the White House: 

The President's tragic death was a sad necessity, but it will unite the Republican 
party and save the Republic. Life is a fleeting dream, and it matters little when one 
goes. A human life is of small value. 

Did you ever see a more desperate fight for a human life, than this crim- 
inal has made for the last two months ? 

He seems to have altered his mind. With President Garfield, human 
life was of small value, but with this man, who looks only to be removed 
to paradise, for he is a Christian man, and tells you he is in the service 
of the firm of Jesus Christ & Co., a human life seems to be of considerable 
value. (Reading.) 

I presume the President was a Christian, and that he will be happier in paradise 
than here. 

Strange that the same rule don't apply to Guiteau, when Mason and 
Jones shot at him. 

I had no ill-will towards the President. 

Don't you think he had some good-will towards Charles Guiteau? 

Suppose that I should deliberately fire a pistol into a crowd, and imperil 
a hundred human lives, and should set up as a defense, that I had no ill- 
will either to the crowd, or the particular man I shot; the law would imply 
malice, and the most reckless and deadly malice. 

Again reading : 
To General Sherman : 

I have just shot the President. 

I shot him several times, as I wished him to go as easily as possible. His death was 
a "political necessity. 

Not only was it not true, that it icas God's act. This letter to General 
Sherman puts his defense on the distinct ground, that his death was a 
political necessity. So in the letter to the White House he says : 

I had no ill-will towards the President. 

That was on his shallow theory of " no malice, no murder." 
Gentlemen, I desire to call your attention to the testimony of Mr. Brooks. 
But it is fresh in your remembrance. That night, there was no pretense 
that God commanded the act. On the contrary, the mruderer stated to 
Brooks on the night of the second of July, that he acted on political con- 
siderations, and he stated what they were. Detective Brooks said, " Did 



120 

you think you could '1" such a thing as a < Christian man ? I am a Christian 
man, too. Di<l you take God into account 

II" said he had done his duty to God and to the American people. 

Bui the inspiration, the commandment of God, all this he had forgotten. 
When Brooks testified, the prisoner admitted thai he had stated the facts 
as they were; so there i*- do doubt, the act was one of political murder. 
I come now to the testimony of General Reynolds, which I need ool refer 
to in detail, as my time is limited. The prisoner, as you remember, 
admitted thai the facts as stated by Reynolds, were substantially true. 

lie asked < reneral Reynolds : 

Where were you on the day of the assassination ? 

Assassination/ I thoughl it was a removal. 

The Prisoner. Tneverused il>> word " assassination" sir ; and Rey- 
nolds lies when he says so. 

Mr. Porter. I understood him to say, that Reynolds's testimony was 
substantial!) true. We will see presently whether the prisoner used the 
word " assassination " or not. It was alluded to by him first, by asking: 

Where were you on the da}' of the assassination ? 

I am going to have the Harpers publish my life, my address, and my book (The 
Truth) all in one book. It will make about six or eight hundred pages. The Eerald 
is friendly to Conkling, and will be friendly to me. when all this matter gets before the 
people, and they know just why I assassinated the President. 

Again on page 1 L02 the word is repeated, and again on page \\ { >i : 

If 1 had not seen that the Presidenl was doing greal wrong to the Stalwarts, and 
was wrecking tin- Republican party, I would not have assassinated him. 

By the way, you should remember that this occurred, when he had been 
not merely a disappointed office-seeker, hut a disappointed President mur- 
derer. At that time, it was supposed that Presidenl Garfield would 
recover. The prisoner had, up to that time, expected that he would die, 
and this would make General Arthur President. This was an unexpected 
reverse to him. How could the Stalwarts help him now. The President 

w as alive. 

I le had his plan of defense, and had put it before the American people. If 
he had succeeded in killing the President, the Stalwarts would have been 

reinstated in power, lint he learned from General Reynolds thai hi had 
failed. What was he to do then? He was very naturally startled. His 
original defense — that there was no malice in the aet, that it was purely 
patriotic— would not now avail him. Still he put that forward, making the 
best of it he could. 

"Thou shall not kill'' is written in the divine word, but probably then, 
the dim and crude idea occurred to him of a personal inspiration to kill 
the President of the United States. 



121 

The Prisoner. There are 38 commandments in the Bible, to kill for the 
good of the people, when the rulers did wrong. 

Mr. Porter. Did he say that then ? Was he really " a stalwart " 
student of the Bible ? Does he now mean to say, that it was an act of 
Biblical inspiration ? Not a word of it. He had forgotten his inspiration 
then, but he remembered and claimed that it was a patriotic act. (Read- 
ing :) 

I thought my friends would come and see me, by the hundred. 

They will come when Garfield is dead. It is proper they should not come now . 

That was the substance of the conversation. Then comes the. third in 
terview, when the slips were shown to him of interviews with the great 
Stalwart statesmen, as to Garfield's murder, and the burning and eloquent 
denunciation of Senator Conkling. Then came the letters of Senator 
Conkling and others, which fixed upon this murderer a brand, almost as in- 
delible as that which the Almighty himself planted upon the brow of Cain. 

The Prisoner. That is false. They said that, on the second and third 
of July. These men are my friends to-day. 

Mr. Porter. (Reading :) 

When I told him about the President, he seemed very much disappointed. For 
some time, he appeared in great agony, and paced the room for a time, and then, after a 
little, he collected himself ; he commenced giving utterance ; after he read them, he 
used the words "most astounding," the only words he uttered for some little time. 

Then pacing the room for a short time, he became somewhat more calm, and he said to 
himself, that is, not addressing any one, "That is why : they know why." Then 
looking at me, and addressing me directly, " What does it mean 1 I would have staked 
my life that they would defend me." 

They pretend to see only the bloody act of an assassin. They did want General 
Garfield removed. They talked about impeaching him. Then, after a pause, he said, 
" They raise this terrible cry against me, for fear blame might attach to them. They 
know how bitterly they denounced him." 

Again, as General Reynolds proceeds to read from his notes, the pris- 
oner adds : 

He is stating what I said ; it is correct in substance. 
Then, lie adds : 

The Stalwarts are horrified out of their senses, for fear they will be suspected. Do 
they know, I have stated that I had no accomplices ? My reply was, "They do know." 
"And they still talk this way?" My answer was, " They do." Then the words, 
'• Most astounding, most astounding." 

Then looking at the paper, and reading that extract about General Logan, he said, 
" The idea of General Logan saying I am insane. I am not more insane than he is." 

Then, after thinking for a few moments, catching the fresh idea, "this 
will redound to my advantage;" and then, he immediately asked for a pen 
and paper, and wrote hurriedly, this address to the American people. The 



L22 

address is in his own handwriting. He tells you now, that he never called 
his act an assassination. This paper has never been brought to tht notiet 
"/ tin public until novo. At the time it was pul in evidence, being ad- 
dressed to the American people and to the public, it was supposed to have 
been one of those published just alter the assassination : but this 
paper, and the other, are those written by him on the 18th and 19th of 
July. 

I read only the material parts, because the clock admonishes me that I 
mu8l -""ii close: 

To the Ann rican people : 
I was almost stupefied when I discovered the fact — 

That is, that his stenographic statements had not been published 1 ; they 
had been very properly kepi by the officers of the government, with a view 
to his conviction of the crime — 

I claim that the reason the people feel as they do, is because I have had no defense. 
/ now wish to 8tat( distinctly, why I attempted to remove the President. 

Nim'\ surely, we will at last be reminded of Go(Vs command. 

I had read the newspapers, for and against the administration, very carefully for 
two months, before J conceived the idea of removing him. Gradually, as tht result of 
readiwj the newspapers, the idea settled on me, that if the President were removed it 
would unite the two factions of the Republican party, and therefore save the govern- 
ment from going into the hands of the 'ex-rebels. 

I had none but the best feelings toward the President personally. I had no malice 
and no murderous intent. I acted solely for the good of Jhe American people. I ap- 
preciate all the religious sentiment and horror, connected with the attt mpted removal of 
the President. No one can surpass me in tins ; but Iput away all sentiment, and did 
my duty to God and the American people. 

/ c '- to be a gentleman and a Christian, and do not dissipaU in any way. 

All my papers have been suppressed, and the public sees nothing»but the fact of the 
assassination. 

That is his record, made in blood, and by tht sapu hand that held the 
murderous weapon against the life of the President, and he says he never 
used tht word assassination. 

ft was my own conception and execution. 

Gentlemen, who shol Garfield; the Deity, or this assassin ? 

It was my own conception, and execution, and whether right or wrong, I take tht c 

qut <■■ 

Gentlemen, the time has come when I must close. The government 
baa presented the case before you, without fear, favor, or affection. We 
have endeavored to discharge our responsible duties as 'well as we could, 
and his honor lias most certainly discharged his as well as he could, 
under many difficulties and embarrassments unprecedented in our judicial 
annals, I know you will be faithful to your oaths, and will discharge your 
still greater responsibilities with equal fidelity. So discharge them, that so 



123 

far as depends on your action, a least, political assassination shall find no 
sanction, to make it a precedent in our future history. He who has 
ordained that human life shall be shielded by human laws from human 
<rime, presides over your deliberations, and the verdict which shall be 
given or withheld to-day, will be recorded where we are all to meet. I trust 
that verdict will be prompt, that it will represent the dignity and majesty 
of the law, your integrity and the honor of the country, and that this trial, 
which has so deeply interested ail the nations of the earth, may result in 
a warning, to reach all lands, that assassination must not be used as a means 
of promoting parti/ ends or political revolution. I trust that the time 
may come, in consequence of the attention which has been drawn by the 
circumstances of this crime and this trial, to a peril common to every well 
ordered and organized society, when, by international arrangement be- 
tween the various government of Christendom, the law shall be so 
strengthened, that the political assassin shall find no refuge on the face of 
the earth. The plotting murderer who slaughtered President Garfield, 
knew that, against the laws of God and man, he was breaking with 
bloody hands into the house of life. He did not know, that over his own 
grave, if grave he is to have, will be written hy the general consent of 
mankind, in dark letters, an inscription appropriate to the grave of a 
coward, an ingrate, a swindler, and an assassin. 

The notoriety which he has sought, will be found in that inscription. He 
did not know, what we do, that even though by a lingering death the 
President yielded up his life, the hand that aimed that pistol at his back, 
if I may be permitted to borrow au illustration from the Attorney-General, 
on the occasion to which I have referred, of the dedication of the memo- 
rial statue of Alexander Hamilton, in some respects akin to this in its 
reminders, the asssassin unconsciously wrote the name of James A. 
Garfield in characters of light upon the firmament, there to remain as 
radiant and enduring as if every letter were traced in living stars. 



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